Creator: Lois Lund, Jeff Charnley

Subjects: Anniversaries, Sesquicentennial

Description:

Lois Lund received her PhD from University of Minnesota with food research as her major course of study. After serving as Assistant Director at the School of Home Economics at the University of Minnesota and serving as Associate Dean in the College of Agriculture and Home Economics at Ohio State University, Dr. Lund came to MSU in 1973 as the Dean of the College of Human Ecology. During her tenure she increased student enrollment, research funding for the faculty, and endowments; established graduate and undergraduate advisory councils; created a human ecology library; significantly increased the number of College faculty who were recognized nationally and internationally; developed Interaction 75 which introduced new concepts of human ecology to businessmen, educators, and public servants; developed first external human ecology master’s degrees in Okinawa, Japan; created a survey of colleges relative to racial and sex employment patters in home economics and human ecology; established the College Research Initiation Grant Program which provided start-up money to faculty for research; created they first MSU collegiate micro-computer lab for classroom use; and established the College of Human Ecology Distinguished Lecture Series. Dr. Lund served as dean of the College until 1985. From 1985 to 1996 she was a professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition where she established a functional undergraduate major stressing both food science and business. Dr. Lund retired from MSU in 1996.
Topics Covered in the Interview include: interdisciplinarity; domestic science/economy; home economics; human ecology; Industrial Revolution; homemaker; child development; Cooperative Extension; College of Human Ecology; homemaker; consumer behavior; nutrition; food research; Interaction 75

Date: March 14, 2000

Format: Text/pdf

Original Format: Word Document

Resource Identifier: Lund, Lois.pdf

Collection Number: UA 3

Language: English

Rights Management: Educational use only, no other permissions given. Copyright to this resource is held by Michigan State University and is provided here for educational purposes only. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of the University Archives & Historical Collections, Michigan State University.

Contributing Institution: University Archives & Historical Collections, MATRIX, Office of the Provost

Relation: Sesquicentennial Oral History Project

Contributor: MSU Archives and Historical Collections

Text File: Download

Transcript: LOIS LUND

March 14, 2000

Jeff Charnley,
interviewer



Charnley: Today is Tuesday, March 14, the year 2000. We’re in East Lansing, Michigan, and I am Jeff Charnley interviewing Dr. Lois Lund for the MSU [Michigan State University] Oral History Project for the sesquicentennial of the university, which will be commemorated in the year 2005. As you can see, Professor Lund, we’re tape-recording today. Do you give us permission to tape?

Lund: Yes, definitely.

Charnley: I’d like to start first with you talking. You said you had an introductory statement where you’d like to give some background. If you would be pleased to do that, then I’ll have some questions for you. So I’ll turn it over to you.

Lund: One of the things that I thought I’d share with you is that I was an administrator for twenty years in three locations in the U.S. Prior to being an administrator, I was a teacher at the collegiate level for twelve years. Following stepping down from the role of dean, I became again an instructor, a professor, for eleven years. So I’ve had kind of a balanced administrative and teaching role for over these forty years.
The thing that I wanted to share with you is what this field that I’ve been involved in is all about because of the stereotypic view of home economics, human ecology. So I thought it would help you and listeners to have somewhat of an idea of how this thing started and then how it changed and why it changed in the way it did, because it enters in to what we were able to do here at MSU.
The concept of home economics was initiated in the mid 1800s. Really, it took real value during the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution really changed the United States industrially in factories and businesses and so forth, but it did not change positively homes and families within homes. There was great fallout that really was deleterious to households.
Human ecology, home economics, domestic science, whatever you want to call it, is the application of science to the management of the home and its near environments. So it includes such fields as human development, including child development; human welfare, including study of health and well-being and food safety and nutrition and prevention of disease; it included financial well-being, the study of financial well-being; it included the study of housing, of interpersonal relationships within the close environments of the family. So initially this field, which started in the 1850s and really took shape finally around 1910, was chiefly a woman’s field. There were a few men, illustrious men, who entered the field, particularly in the area of science and related to nutrition. But initially, there was a very strong stress on the application of science to problems of families and households.
There also was stress on simplification. This was the end of the Victorian era, in which every home was filled with goods and hangings and drapes and you name it. It involved not only tremendous amount of labor, but it also involved the hiring of mostly immigrant labor in order to manage the home. When that immigrant labor went into industry, rather than working in households, there was a loss of that kind of help. Immediately the person who was the homemaker was responsible for managing everything within the home. That meant that you either simplified or you made household work an incredible job.
So this field that dealt with home and family began to evolve as a scientific field aimed at the management of the household, the management of people, and the management of things in the period of time between 1900 and 1910. The field eventually organized as a collection of applied sciences, both physical and social, with the focus on family and home and the near environment; that is, the near community. The titles that the field was given was domestic science, domestic economy, home economics, and eventually, today, a change into human ecology.
This movement from home economics to human ecology produced some wondrous historic stereotyping. Let me explain what I’m talking about. Not only related to a woman’s field, but also a field that dealt only with home and family and never ventured beyond the household door. MSU was founded in 1855, and it was founded as an agricultural college of the State of Michigan. The very first class that came in was in 1861. It was an all-male class, and was preparing some jobs in agribusiness, as we call it now, but primarily farming as an industry.
In 1862, Justin Morrill sponsored the Land Grant Institution Act. At that point, money came in from land grants to certain kinds of education. It states in that land grant that it is to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life, and predominant among that was the profession of homemaking and motherhood.
The first class to come into MSU was in 1870, of women. There were ten coeds that came in at that time. Those women really studied the agricultural program. They had a few classes that were related to women’s efforts, but primarily it was an agricultural program.
In 1888, a program was funded by USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture], called the Agricultural Experiment Station Program. It was further funded by Agricultural Research Service. Many research-funding programs were evolved through USDA, some of which were located in the states. AES stations were located here at MSU. Funding was given there, by the feds, matched by the state, and the faculty in those units were university faculty and fitted into the promotion and merit increase and the whole thing, but research was identified for agriculture and agriculture-related areas. Home economics was identified as a related area.
Another program that was established was through the Smith-Leaper [phonetic] Act. The Smith-Leaper Act established the Cooperative Extension program. The Cooperative Extension program was also a USDA-administered program, but it established cooperative extension services in each state in the Union, and primarily in each county in each state, and specialists and extension agents in both agriculture and home economics were established throughout the state through that system.
Another public act was the Smith-Hughes Act, which was around 1918, and it established vocational education in both agriculture and in home economics. This meant that high schools were mandated to teach agriculture classes and to teach home economics classes. The first home economics curriculum was established here at MSU in 1896. It was called Domestic Economy.
Now, the reason that I’m telling you all of this is that briefly, what we have historically is a field that is an applied field, with focus on home and family and their environments. It's essentially science, physical and social oriented. It is female-dominated and it is agriculturally-dominated and controlled, not by people within, not by faculty or by leadership, but by public policy, because legislative acts and funding were directed to the home economics, domestic economy, whatever you want to call it in those days. Those had very significant shaping characteristics on the field.
This domination by public policy acts of agriculture continued up until after World War II and into the early fifties. The change really occurred as a consequence primarily of increased opportunities for women and diminished funding for agriculture. These kind of ran as two times. There also was much more sophistication in the areas within home economics than could be supported simply by agriculture. So what you began to see was home economics breaking out of the barriers that had formally supported it.
MSU’s struggle began in the 1960s, and it culminated in the decision to form the College of Human Ecology in 1970. I tell you this because that enters into what we were able to achieve during the years when I was a dean.
One of the things that I should share with you is that when I was trying to develop some notes, so that I could tell you what this was all about, I began to realize that all--I’m very history-conscious--that all of the records that I had evolved over some years as a dean were stored in the basement of the Human Ecology Building. Those records included enrollment trends, significant collections of records, where we did analysis year by year, including budgetary analysis.
Shortly after I stepped down from the dean, that basement storage area was sealed by the university because of asbestos contamination. So, to my knowledge, they are still sealed. So, prior to my departure, I had placed as much of the historical data down there as was appropriate at the time. Very little of the annual data that I evolved that should be in the archives was placed in the archives because it is contaminated, which is an interesting kind of thing. [Laughter] It may be that sometimes history becomes contaminated, but not by asbestos.
I did not go through and pursue getting those records. I didn’t go through the channels to do that, but at some time someone might want to do that. My recollections here are based on what records I took home, that were my personal records, and included two drawers of speeches and reports and items of that sort which I went through to draw out the kinds of things that were done year by year. I think, on the whole, that what I’m going to share with you is almost as accurate as would be true of the actual data, but they may be a little slanted.
Let’s see, you asked about my general education and professional background. I was born on August 9th of 1927, a very auspicious year, since that was the Year of the Hare, and the Year of the Hare is an auspicious year. I was reared in Deep River Falls, Minnesota, which, at the time I was there, was a population of about seven thousand.
My father was a businessman. My mother was a science teacher in high school. She taught chemistry. After her marriage, she became a homemaker and mother. They believed in two things: success through education, and responsibility to community. I have two siblings. An older brother who is three years older than I, he has degrees from Harvard and from Harvard Business, and has been both in business and education. He is seventy-five, but he is currently continuing work at Boston U. We don’t give up. [Laughter] A younger sister, who is five years younger than I. Her degrees are from the University of Minnesota, and she has worked in education and in business. Her degrees were in economics.
I graduated from high school in ‘45, valedictorian of my class, and was graduated in ‘49 with a B.S., with high honors, in foods research. One of the things that happens in families is if you admire your parent, you sometimes follow your parents. We all admired my mother, and so we all dipped into science avidly. In 1954, I received a master of science, with a major in food research and a minor in higher education. The thesis work I did was on ascorbic acid and dehydro-ascorbic acid.
Then a Ph.D. in ‘66; again a major in food research with what was a minor in agricultural economics and a collateral field of higher education. What I found was that I was teaching and reading at the desk, materials in food science, but that when I came home, I was reading economic journals. And I began to realize that I was a combination of the interests that had been in my family, of both business and education, and with very significant interest in business, and particularly financial management. The dissertation that I wrote was on an eclectic approach to study of children’ consumer behavior relative to food. A colleague of mine, Mark Greenberg, worked with me in developing a technical bulletin on that, which came out on ‘69. That research was supported by the Food and Consumer Economics Research Division of ARS in USDA.
I have some observations. I was reading in the Yankee magazine, this month’s Yankee magazine, and there’s an article here about Barry Moshier [phonetic], who is a very significant illustrator and publisher of precious books. He is talking about his background, and he said, “We are, all of us, shaped by experience.” Moshier is a man keenly aware of his formative influences, and he views bygone factors, elements, personalities, influences, and epiphanies, what he calls vectors, as crucial in understanding not only himself but his art. I think that’s true of most of us, that we are an accretion of experiences and we are not really independent, we are what we become.

Charnley: In the course of your graduate study, when you were working on your dissertation, how was it that you came to choose that area? Was it another teacher, or was it just an area that you saw the need for, or was it suggested to you? How did you come to choose that?

Lund: In my dissertation?

Charnley: Yes.

Lund: I was interested in consumer behavior. The field of economics, for many, many years, consumption behavior was kind of a stepchild, because production behavior was the key thing for most of the years. Even now, there is relatively few people who are interested in consumer behavior, with the exception of predicting what people will take off the market.

Charnley: Like in advertising, that type of thing?

Lund: I was really interested in that. I also was interested in an eclectic approach, that is methodology, studying not just direct vectors to an action, but a multitude of characteristics that children exhibit, that makes them move in a certain direction. So when I said an eclectic approach, this studied the child and family, it studied the child within a school, it studied the child within the market, it studied the child within nutrition knowledge, many different areas of concern which I then used factor analysis, which was a new technique at that time, to separate out, to see if we could get a picture of the kinds of variables that were determining certain kinds of behavior. That was interesting to me, which was a methodological study.
Up until the mid sixties, if you wished to do an analysis with many, many, many variables, factor analysis was so complicated and so time-consuming, that until the computer services were available, became readily available to researchers, there was no way to undertake them. I’ve forgotten how long they said it would take if I had to do it by hand, but I mean I wouldn’t live that long.
This was in the day of cards, you brought your cards in and you gave it to the machine. The machine cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked, and eventually you got some kind of response from it. Nowadays, that would take seconds. So the researchers today have enormous benefit gleaned from this kind of services that have been evolved.
Funny things did happen, though. One day I brought in a box of cards and gave them to the computer people. Waited and waited and waited. Finally, after I went back the next day, they gave me the box back and they said, “Well--” I looked inside, and the machine had taken a nice big bite out of all my cards. And in the cavity, it said, “Delicious.” [Laughter] Wonderful. In those days, you never ever had one set of cards. You always had a backup, or two or three.

Charnley: And you did in this case?

Lund: Oh, definitely. I knew enough not to trust anybody. But that really was interesting to do. The methodology used became one that was able to be used by other researchers, not only in consumer behavior, but in studying nutrition. So that was interesting to me, that it was picked up and used.

Charnley: Would you say again what year you finished your degree?

Lund: I finished it in ‘66.

Charnley: And what was the university?

Lund: University of Minnesota. All of these were Minnesota. Why one university? Okay. Because I get asked this question every so often. One university for two degrees, like for bachelor of science and master of science is sort of usual. That’s not a problem. But many people have asked me why I stayed on to take a Ph.D. at University of Minnesota. I stayed on because there was almost no opportunity for a woman to study economics anyplace else, who came with a background in food research. It was only because I had worked with several of these people, knew them, and could talk with them and could explain where I was coming from and what I wanted to do, that I was allowed to even try out for a place in the Ph.D. program in Ag Econ.
I was told that I would need to re-register and re-take the Ag Econ courses so that I could prove that I could compete with the undergraduate students. So I did. I wasn’t going to argue. I wanted my goal. About one-third of the way through, the students in the class went to talk with the professor and said, “Do you know you put this woman who creams off all the As and it’s not fair to us. I mean, that’s not fair!” Fortunately, the protest of the students helped me get into the Ph.D. program. [Laughter]

Charnley: That’s interesting.

Lund: And who am I to knock that?

Charnley: Small revolt.

Lund: A small revolt by the right people. It was an interesting time. I was born during the Depression. In fact, my father lost all of his savings because his bank failed, I mean the bank he had his money failed, just before I was born. I grew up in the Depression years, and I was a young woman during World War II. The role of women during that time was extremely interesting, because from 1927 when I was born until the late thirties, women’s role was as homemaker and mother--period. But when the war broke out, there was no one to run the machines. There was no one to do this, there was no one to do that, there was no one to handle the traffic in the street. So women were then put into career--well, women were able to work in jobs that paid money. And the minute the war was over, there was enormous pressure placed on moving women back to homemaker and mother.
The biggest propaganda I’ve ever read came out from that time. Very, very interesting to go back and read. You were supposed to go into the kitchen and into the nursery, and, by George, everybody did that. Well, those of us who had lost our future partners had no one to go back to in homemaking and nursery, and so decided to go on for further education. But out of this, this anger by women, came some of the feminist movement. Also came the civil rights movement, and attention paid to disabled people, to disadvantaged people, to minorities, to children, to elderly. All of this began to surface at the same time because of real discontent among fifty percent of our population. And it’s still true.
Then there also were tremendous career opportunities that began surfacing after World War II. So, at my time, when I was doing professional study and the early career years, there were very few women my age who were studying for a Ph.D. They were all having babies. I don’t denigrate that; that’s just the way it was. So that you could count probably on one hand the women my age who got a Ph.D. as I did, and who were interested in any administrative role or even any paid occupation. So for many years I served as the single female administrator in many institutions. That was especially true in the sixties and the seventies.
You asked about the positions that I held. I was an instructor for several years. But administratively I held the title of assistant director at the School of Home Economics at the University of Minnesota. Once I had completed my Ph.D., I was instantly asked if I would serve as assistant director and agreed to do so.
Then I had a phone call from Roy Cottman [phonetic] at Ohio State and wanted to know if I would come over and interview for a position of associate dean in their College of Agriculture and Home Economics. Do you notice agriculture and home economics, that tie? I said that I didn’t really think that I wanted to, and Roy says, “What do you mean, you don’t want to? The least you could do is come over here and look at us.” So I got kind of cajoled into it, and so I did, and was there for a period of time.
When I was there, we had a series of meetings of students who would come and meet with our students at OSU. Ohio State was one of the ten largest Home Ec programs in the U.S. It had over 1,000 undergraduate students and about a 180 graduate students.

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]

Charnley: When the tape ended, Dr. Lund was talking about her experience at the Ohio State University as associate dean.

Lund: We had over 140 faculty. This included about 100 extension agents, who were out in the state as well as on campus. Our on-campus faculty were around forty. The school was third nationally in the number of Ph.D.s that were awarded annually, and it was involved in programs funded by USAID in India and in Brazil. When I was there, I visited those programs in India and Brazil, and reviewed them on executive visit.
But in 1971, we had a meeting, probably one of our honoraries, in which students came from all over this region to meet with us. I made a speech and also interfaced with them. Much to my surprise, one of those students went back to MSU, where she was a student, to recommend to Associate Provost Dorothy Arata that she had found the dean for the College of Human Ecology, which had a vacancy at that time. Dorothy Arata told me later that this was the first time that the provost’s office had ever had a student come and recommend someone for deanship. I had some question about it, too. [Laughter]
But Dorothy called me, and I said, “I’ve only been here four years. I’m not sure that I’m interested in moving at this time.”
Dorothy said, “Well, the least you can do--." You see, here we go again. "The least you can do is come and talk with me.”
And I said, “Okay, I will come and talk with you, but at my expense, not yours. I do not want to be beholden, and I will meet you in Detroit, at the airport." So I went with eleven pages of questions. [Laughter]

Charnley: Only eleven? [Laughter]

Lund: Which Dorothy was kind of surprised about. She responded to most of my questions. After that meeting, I received an invitation to come and interview for the position, and after much consideration, I finally agreed to do so. I met the expectations of the interviewers, apparently. The position was offered, and I considered it and then I accepted it. I joined MSU on January 1, of 1973.
The question is, what attracted me? Sometimes I wonder about it myself at this point. [Laughter] One of the things that attracted me was this was a mature college. It was established in 1896, and it had characteristics of maturity, which interested me. The faculty had just gone through a review of organization and program and directions and so forth, and I thought what they had come up with was both interesting and challenging, not only in content and in concept, but in possible administrative structure. I also thought that maybe these new conceptualizations that they were putting forward might free the discipline from all of the old concepts and stigmatas attached to the old concept of home economics.
It also appeared to be a pretty good environment for cooperation with other disciplines and units, because I met with several other deans and department chairpersons in other units, and they were very welcoming and indicated interest in interaction, which pleased me. There was very strong interest evidenced by Provost [John] Cantlon in my coming, including indications of support, financial support from central.
I met with the alumni, those who were able to come, and there was strong alumni support. This is the first time that alumni had ever been asked to come and participate in the interviews. I was interested in seeing what the alumni looked like, and were they really interested and supportive, because the alumni are one of the primary sources for development fund money.
They had pretty respectable and teaching and extension programs on line. They could be improved, but they were respectable. They had a very significant student body and a hard-working faculty. They had usable facilities, not good, but usable, and there was improvement possible. And, finally, they guaranteed me a parking space. [Laughter]

Charnley: A real premium. [Laughter]

Lund: First things first.

Charnley: The building where it’s located, what was it called then?

Lund: It was changed to Human Ecology at that point. It was called Home Economics. It’s always been called by its disciplinary name, but it was changed to Human Ecology at the point of change in 1970.
You asked about the changes that I was able to stimulate or help pursue in the college during my tenure as a dean. There are some things I need to talk to you about relative to significant administrative issues, that occurred during the first five years of my administration. One thing that was extremely difficult to deal with was the concept of the college as being the woman’s program on campus, the women's program on campus. Much more difficult to deal with than then the "women’s program" label put on nursing.
Also difficult to deal with was the concept of home economics as being domestic science, with all of that stereotypic perception by everyone, including out in the state as well as on campus, versus the concepts espoused in human ecology, which was the change over into a new perception. There was a perception among students that courses were no-brainers, which was not true, but there was that perception. And we had some that were no-brainers.
There also was, relative to this, lower salaries for our faculty and lower salaries and opportunities for graduates. I can give you an example. In child development, one of the courses at that time was nursery school teacher, or pre-school teacher. After a student had studied for four years, at a cost of somewhere between twenty and twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand dollars, they then graduated at no matter what level in their class, and then out to a job that paid nine thousand a year. That was unacceptable. Unacceptable. But the American public supports and does not support some effort. And pre-school education at that time was not supported by the American public. It is a little better not, but it's still not good.
We had several of those kinds of careers that people went into, and I would have parents call me and ask me, “How come?” I had very little way to explain to them that I too was confused about this. When students came to talk to me, I told them about this, so that when they made their decision, they knew within the context after making their decision. I think you can make a decision that is not wise, but it has to be with knowledge.
We had an enrollment swell in the college between 1970 and 1974. I arrived in 1973, and we had a 144 percent increase in students, undergraduate students. We had an undergraduate student body of 2,200 undergraduate students, which was about 700 more than we could handle. One of the reports that I wrote, I remember reading this phrase, “At the same time, other units of higher education are observing severe drops in enrollments and a lessening of interest in program offerings. We are experiencing a rapid increase in enrollments and a clamoring demand for our programs. At the moment we gain full competitive advantage, the bank closes.” What amazing irony, because this was the time when funding began to diminish, so there was less and less funding, even though we had more and more need for it.

Charnley: Can you think of any other, right at that time, what attracted students to the field?

Lund: I think it was the change in the perception and the promise. There was a change in that students and faculty and so forth were told that this was a new college, it was a new concept, and new preparations for careers. So students came. They thought of it as having opportunity, and there was.

Charnley: And the funding in the seventies was still tied to agriculture?

Lund: Some of it was.

Charnley: Some of that had diminished?

Lund: Funding, particularly in research and in extension. Funding for general education programs like academic programs, primarily through the university, but there was a continuing tie perceptually. In other words, if it wasn’t really consistent with a frame of reference that was kind of agricultural, than it wasn’t fundable. But money didn’t come from ag on that sector.
We had a gradual decline in undergraduate enrollments after 1975, in part because we tried to do some management of students. So eventually, we got to an enrollment around 1,500 undergraduates and 250 graduates, and we were able to handle that with the faculty we had. There were some faculty shortfalls. The numbers were inadequate for student enrollments. I commented on that.
The proportion of faculty holding terminal degrees, that is, a Ph.D. degree, was lower than it should be, and the proportion of faculty experienced in research and doing research was low. We had very limited research funding. The research funding was primarily coming from AES, from the Agricultural Experiment Station. So that certain sectors received funding, like nutrition and the food-related sector, but other sectors did not. There was very little action by faculty to seek outside funding for research. And because of all this, there was very limited refereed publication. When you have those things, then you have faculty salaries that are lower. They were non-competitive, both on and off campus.
Then this was a time when the money was being withdrawn. The legislature was cutting back on funding for all programs in the university, and there was a very significant loss of operational and academic program dollars. That retrenchment was felt very severely in the college. It was not well funded to begin with, and then when the promises of the provost to support did not come through, except for a parking space, that was felt very sharply.
So what you had when you had this great swell of students was a tremendous loss of personal time and of professional time, and especially research time. Faculty simply were consumed by being within the classroom, being a warm body in front of students.
Then, I also found that no attention had been paid to the development of an endowment or a gift-fund program. In 1973, when I arrived, the development program for the College of Human Ecology, was $13,000.
Then we had another issue that surfaced, and that was the administrative structure of the college, as designed by the faculty. This was a time, late sixties, was a time when there was a love affair with interdisciplinarity that everything should be done teamwork-wise, everything should be done in an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary fashion, that research should be many people working together towards a common focus, and so forth and so on. The college was designed with three departments that were essentially discipline-based. One was Food Science and Human Nutrition, one was Family and Child Sciences, and one was Human Environment and Design, which had to do with housing and external, like clothing and so forth and so on. These three departments had a definitive focus within themselves.
Then there was a third department which was called Family Ecology. Family Ecology Department was designed as a multidisciplinary unit, drawing FTEs [full-time employees] on a contributed basis from each of the other three departments, and these faculty were to teach in FE and do research on an interdisciplinary mode within FE. The Family Ecology Department was defined as serving--and I’m quoting--“the key integrating function within the college.”
Now, there were many units, not just human ecology, that were established with this kind of a concept during those years. There was a kind of a love affair with this kind of thinking. This concept, which developed in our college in the late sixties, was approved by the faculty in 1970, but it was conceptually late in arriving, from the U.S. standpoint.
It was found in time to be nonfunctional. Conceptually interesting. Family Ecology could function only if faculty were willing to share significant time to participate in interdisciplinarity. And participating in interdisciplinarity requires more time than individual participation, vastly more time.
Now, the university environment was verbally supportive to ID work, but was nonsupportive reward and promotion-wise. The faculty are not stupid. They wised up eventually to the fact that rewards, financial and rank, were dependent on individual achievements and documentation of such. In reality, very few of these multidisciplinary efforts were recognized any place other than verbally. At the present time, they’re being done away with, even now. You have one within your college which is under review at the present time, as I understand it, which is of that same nature, and it is a real problem.
So over time, faculty and departmental support for the administrative structure of FE just simply eroded. In 1979, the faculty of FE recommended and voted to terminate their department. This recommendation was forwarded to me for action by the college. There was full college support, supporting the recommendation. It was forwarded to the university, and it was supported by the university. So FCS, the Family and Child Sciences, became Family and Child Ecology officially in 1980, and faculty affiliated with the former Family Ecology Department joined this new department of FCE.
One of the functions--it’s a long saga. One of the functions of the original FE Department was to teach a core studies series of courses, with emphasis on the concept of family as ecosystem. These three courses start at the freshman level and continue as a final course at the senior level, but as the curriculums in the other three departments became increasingly professional and technical, the students rebelled against taking these courses that forced them into a focus that they had no interest in. So gradually--and this happened even before the department was terminated--the series of courses was changed from a structured three-course requirement to one elective course. I think that that’s still on the books, that one elective course, but I need to check on that.

Charnley: Do you remember the title of that, what that course was? I can look it up.

Lund: It was referred to as simply--and there was a series of three courses--it was simply, I think you’d have to probably call the Human Ecology. I don’t remember all the details. One was Families and Ecosystem. That may be the title that has continued for the elective.
But teaching and administering the core studies program was a nonprofessional return job. There was little opportunity for advancement and there was no research potential, so that any strong faculty who were at one time involved in this withdrew from any affiliation with the program, and despite very significant financial and time investment, the program was never successful. So that was one thing that they lost that people had hoped would be successful.
Then the Institute for Family and Child Study was established in the sixties as a collegiate program. The child development labs were located in that institute. As with the design of FE, the theory was to operate interdisciplinary research studies using faculty also from the three departments as well as other university units, with focus on study of family and child, but only a few Human Ecology faculty saw the advantage of working within this sector, in part because of the time involvement and the inability to obtain funding for research for these types of research.
So eventually the child development laboratories were moved, were literally taken out of the building where the institute was, and were relocated, and the Institute for Family and Child Study was moved from collegiate identity to the university administration. It has a title and is now still in existence: Institute for Children, Youth, and Families, and is housed, if I remember, in Kellogg, right now.

Charnley: Is that administered by the provost?

Lund: The unit retains affiliation with CHE, with the College of Human Ecology, but it’s administered as a university institute. This move, that shift occurred after my departure as a dean.
There was something else that happened which is interesting, and that is very significant changes occurred in the funding and organization of the national and state extension programs, the cooperative extension programs. That is still continuing. But that resulted in very significant changes in the kinds of services that were extended by personnel within the College of Human Ecology, especially extension personnel. And most of the changes there also occurred after my departure as a dean.
Within all the universities and academic units during the early seventies, student riots and rebellions and faculty rebellions occurred. Most of these agitations occurred because people were interested in having participation rights in governance, not only students, but also faculty. Also, because of the riots, there was built a considerable credibility gap between citizens and faculty, between town and gown, relative to units of higher education. There also was a considerable credibility gap that rose between faculty and administration. The seventies were troubled days for academic units. I think some of what we see today is carried from perceptions that started in the seventies, kind of a discontent with what was going on and an attempt to change in order to make things better.

Charnley: Did you see that in the students in your college?

Lund: Oh, yes, and particularly saw it in the students at Ohio State. We had an honest-to-goodness rebellion by students at Ohio State very similar to what happened here.
[Clifton R.] Wharton [Jr.], in fact, told me one time that when he first came to Ohio State, that he had just gotten into Kolls [phonetic] House, and he and his wife were getting settled and had gone to bed and were sleeping. He said all of a sudden, there was a banging at the door, terrible banging at the door, and he said he went, and there was some of the administrators who said, “You’ve got to come and talk with the students. You have to come talk to the students.” He said they were rebelling near the Student Union. Well, the Student Union is immediately next door to our building, or the Human Ecology Building. He said, “I got out there on the street, and they handed me a bullhorn, and I didn’t know how to use a bullhorn.” [Laughter] He said, “But you do what you’re called to do when you’re an administrator.” Which is true. It’s true.
When I was at Ohio State, students rebelled there. They marched into McBride Hall, which was the hall that our program was predominantly in, and marched all the way around what I called the donut. We had spaces in the middle of the building and then faculty offices around the edge. So there was a corridor that went all the way around. Marched all the way around the donut and into my office, past my secretaries and into my office. Stepped on the chair that was at the end of--this was all [unclear], stepped on the chair, the end of my desk, marched across my desk, stepped down on the other side, and sat down on the floor. After they got that done, I said to them, “Now if you’ll just explain to me what it is you want.” [Laughter]

Charnley: Were they able to do that?

Lund: Yes. They wanted a daycare program for women on campus. I said, “If you’ll leave that with me, I will talk with administration, and we’ll see what we can do.” So we were able, eventually, to establish a daycare program. One of the women who worked with me on that, a woman of partial American Indian background, she came by the other day and we had dinner together. It was a pleasure to see her, too.

Charnley: Did she stay at Ohio State?

Lund: No. She is now at Wisconsin and is working with some of the programs there, social service programs there.

Charnley: Did you encounter anything similar when you got to Michigan State?

Lund: Less here, because it was primarily over. The riot was over. But I did find, when I came here, that the students wanted to have access to the dean. They wanted to talk over problems. They wanted to discuss issues and to have their ideas presented. So we formulated two groups. One was an undergraduate advisory council, which had representatives from all four levels, freshman, sophomore, and so forth, plus males and females. Then we also established a graduate advisory council that met with the dean. We met at least once a month, and they were very instrumental in achieving some changes.
One of the things that I was interested in was developing a library for our college. There was a reference library for students. The students helped in the design of that laboratory. They literally came forward with designs of how they would like to have a library designed to serve them. We were able to take those ideas and adapt them so that the central administration would also appreciate it.
But we did do some of those things. We were able to handle several of the interpersonal relations problems that occurred when there were faculty that simply didn’t want to communicate with the students, with the exception of being in a classroom.

[Begin Tape 2, Side 1]

Charnley: This is tape two. This is Jeff Charnley interviewing Professor Lois Lund.
We were talking, when the first tape ended, about the early 1970s and student reactions to the Vietnam War, riot and protest and how in human ecology the students were able to find an outlet for some of that.

Lund: I’m not certain that what we did met all of their needs, but they did have access to administration. I tried hard to listen and to do what I could in achieving a sufficient number of the things they wanted that they felt that their input was important, because I think the hardest thing for students is not to be heard. When not heard, they never get response. So we worked on that. When I arrived in ‘73 here, most of the real rioting kind of action was over with the students and they had settled down. I’m not sure that that settling down was profitable for them. They probably should have kept rioting. Nonetheless.
There were some other changes that occurred that were positive changes. I’ve talked about things that caused us problems, particularly administrative problems as I working along with the curriculums and so forth. But we, over time, were able to improve the program quality. The College of Human Ecology undergraduate program was ranked sixth among 551 institutions offering a home economics degree in 1985. That ranking was by the Gourman Study--that’s G-O-U-R-M-A-N Study--on the basis of program quality and effectiveness. Our programs in CHE were ranked within the top ten for several years. I’ve not watched that ranking lately, so I don’t know what happened to it.

Charnley: That was at the end of your tenure as dean?

Lund: Yes. That was in ‘85, was when that came out. But it was a pleasure to see that. Sometimes you have a hard time, you have a sense in your own self that the quality is improving and you see evidences of it when you start evaluating programs, but it is always good to have someone from outside say, “Yes, you’re right.”

Charnley: This was an important national study?

Lund: Yes. We also saw in that period of time when I was a dean, very significant increase in the number of faculty that were recognized nationally and internationally, and also locally both here on campus and in the state, for their outstanding work, and particularly notable improvement in research contributions and publications.
I was interested that the concept of ecology was accepted nationally and internationally. Sometimes I think that it was conceptually not accepted, but as a word was accepted as a title for the field, because people seemed to think that it had more status than the word "economics" after the introductory work.
We developed a logo for the college, which was kind of fun, to reflect the interactive nature of the units. That logo is still in use, which has been interesting to me.
I was distressed about the perception in the state, when I first came, of home economics as being only home and family, only homemaker and nursery, and worked with Cooperative Extension to develop a program which introduced the new college and the new college concepts to businessmen and educators and public servants of various kinds in six regions in the state. We called that program Interaction ‘75. It went out in the spring of ‘75. And it was a lot of work. We had money both from the provost and from CES to do this, but it was very productive. We got good response from it, and I do think it helped some to change the stereotypic view of the college. There was great interest by our alumni in the state, who really were happy that we did this.
One of the things that we did was to review all of the programs, the academic programs, within the college, revise them where it was necessary to achieve professional relevance and quality. Where programs were no longer really relevant, we deleted them. A few new programs were added, but not very many. Where there were professional programs, we had them reviewed for professional accreditation, and I think all that we had reviewed were given professional accreditation.
We developed the first--I didn’t, but developed in the college--was the first external master's degree program to be offered overseas in human ecology. It was established in 1982. The program was developed and continues to be administered by Dr. Norma Bobbitt. The purpose of this program is to prepare professionals for leadership positions in business and government and community organizations that provide human services to individuals and family. It’s a project that is sponsored by the Department of Defense. Approximately 260 students have graduated with their master's degree over these years, and approximately 50 faculty have gone over to Okinawa to teach in regular classes. The program is located on the U.S. base in Okinawa, Japan. But it has provided an international contact for our faculty, which has been worthwhile, because it has introduced many faculty to working outside the States. There now are many faculty who have international programs as well as national programs, so I think this first step was very valuable.

Charnley: Does that continue today?

Lund: Yes, it continues today. It was refunded a year ago for, I think, another five years. It’s an interesting program.
We really had so many students on hand when I first came, that we never thought about recruitment, but when we began to realize that we might go below 1,500 students, undergraduate, we developed the first student recruitment programs. We established it in the late seventies and early eighties. It was effective in stopping the fall in undergraduate enrollment.
One of the things that I noticed when I first came in was that there were so few scholarships and fellowships in the college. The number of college scholarships and fellowships that we finally were able to give to undergraduate students increased from ten in ‘72 to forty-four in 1985. We also established collegiate fellowships for master's and doctoral students. The first doctoral fellowship for minority students in human ecology was in 1981.
Another thing that we worked on was to try to develop career ladders for students that were rewarding. This always was a matter of great concern to me, because I think if you’ve invested what you invest in a college education, you sure should be able to get a life-supporting job. The job should be a career, an initial job that allows you to move up the ladder. So we worked on that. In some sectors it went very well.
We had very grave economic setbacks in Michigan over those periods of years.

Charnley: In the early 1980s, especially.

Lund: In the late 1970s and 1980s. But I was able to obtain good increases in FTEs of faculty and graduate assistants and clerical and technical staff. We absolutely had to have them. I was able to get some funding for that and also was able to get significant adjustment in college faculty salaries. I argued for and achieved market adjustment funds each year when these were offered so that salaries were at national competitive level when I departed as a dean in 1985.
We made very significant effort to hire faculty that had both strong teaching as well as strong research experience. I fear in the past there had been kind of a token attention paid to that. But unless you have strength in both sectors, you have a weak faculty. We were able to hire faculty who had this. We were also able to bring faculty in with compatible education and research background, but who came from sectors other than traditional home economics. So we were able to expand the purview of backgrounds of people through hiring beyond home economics background. We also hired both men and women.
I was very pleased to obtain very significant improvement and merit increases and promotions for CHE faculty who had met the requirements, and many of them had met the requirements. But it was a case of arguing the case and then bringing it to the [unclear].

Charnley: At the provost level?

Lund: At the provost level. I was pleased that we were able to do that.
One of the things I was interested in was diversity issues. We had had affiliation with 1890 schools, 1890 land grant, which are the black, minority, technically black land-grant schools. We had had very close affiliation with faculty in those schools and worked with them on many efforts. But I was interested as to the commitment of home economics to minority hirings and minority promotions and raises. So in 1979, I did a survey of colleges relative to racial and sex employment patterns in academic units of home economics, human ecology, and shared those data with people across the United States. Eventually those data became a benchmark, U.S. benchmark data. But I was interested in it. It was really interesting to look at.

Charnley: Did you publish that study?

Lund: Yes. We published it as a monograph within the college.
One of the things that I thought was necessary was to establish an advisory committee for students that were minority students. So just as we had evolved the dean’s undergraduate advisory committee, we evolved three other advisory committees that were on minority affairs. One was on faculty, one with undergraduate students, and one with graduate students. So that there were three committees that I met with that had to do with minority issues. We met regularly on matters of importance relative to minority faculty and student relationships and opportunities, and so forth and so on.
One of the things that preoccupied me, because I thought it was so terribly closely tied to salary and to rank, was research and the building of the research program in all sectors within the college. So early on, I took some money that I could find, and established the College Research Initiation Grants Program, which provided money to faculty as start-up dollars, to start up research, to get started into research so that they could search for outside money. We were able, I think partially through the instigation and initiation of this program, were able to get faculty started and get their feet wet in research. By 1985, when I left, we had over twenty-five percent of the faculty were heavily involved into research, which I was pleased about.
There was very dramatic improvement in outside funding for research in the college in all sectors, not just within the science areas and nutrition, but in other sectors, as well. Along with that was increases in merit awards and promotion and also in publication, refereed publications and presentations, and the whole kit and caboodle.
A comment about one program in Cooperative Extension Service. Cooperative Extension Service, in the days when I was dean, contacted enormous numbers of people with education and with programs and so forth and so on. But one of the programs they had, which was sponsored by USDA, was the expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, which was designed to provide nutritional information and food purchase and preparation guidelines to families. It was directed to the poorest families in the community. We reached over 10,000 families a year through this program. This was a very successful program. This continues today. There were many other programs, but I’m not going to give you detail on that. I just thought that this program was very successful.
We did not have good facilities at all times. So one of the things that I tried to do was to seek monies for renovation and to do some major renovations of areas. When I went back to count it up, I’d obtained money for major renovation of thirty-three college offices and office suites and classrooms and labs. Work was completed in those years in which I was dean.
We had a major fire in the Human Ecology Building. It occurred on May 24th, which was a Saturday, 1975. The fire destroyed faculty offices, and the full CES office suite and all of their files. It melted things, melted computers, melted telephones. Very disastrous fire. We had good support obtaining funding for the renovation of the affected areas, but an enormous expenditure of time on that.

Charnley: Did they ever determine the cause?

Lund: Yes. It was an error by an individual.

Charnley: Human error, not direct arson?

Lund: No, it was not arson, not by the least. It was simply an error.
One of the things I told you about was the building of our library. The students also participated in the design of a student lounge. We hadn’t had a student lounge before. I thought that students should have a place to relax and design that space by themselves. So an area was identified and the students were told, especially in HED, “You tell us what you want and we’ll find funding for it.” So they did. They came forward with two or three plans, which were reviewed by student groups as well as faculty. Then we went out and got alumni gifts to support the funding of that. It was a good effort.
We opened the first MSU collegiate micro-computer laboratory for classroom use in 1985. The networking capability was planned in ‘85, but it was completed in ‘86. That is now interpreted to be a university computer laboratory. We also established, as most other colleges at that time, a computer network system within the college, so that we could reach each other with computer services.
We tried to do some things that would contribute to the MSU program. We established a College of Human Ecology Distinguished Lecture Series. We established that in 1977. The first person we had come to speak was Shirley Chisholm. Shirley Chisholm was a black legislator from New York, the State of New York, with very deep interest in child development and programs for young children, particularly for minority children and disadvantaged children. She gave an excellent speech, and we were glad to have her.
The next year we had Ken and Elise Boulding [phonetic]. The Bouldings were economists, and they spoke about their studies and their books and writings, and so forth and so on. Very nice presentation and it was nice to hear from them. They were unique in that they were a couple that worked together as economists, and it was nice to see that.
The third year we had Bob Keesham. Bob Keesham is Captain Kangaroo, who you probably--you’re smiling, so I guess you remember him. [Laughter]

Charnley: Days home from school.

Lund: [Laughter] There were several others. We tried to select people to come and speak who would be of interest to the general MSU population.
We also established the monograph series, publication series. There were five books that were published during the time that I was a dean. One was the Michigan Family Source Book, that was written by Boger and Andrews, which gave solid information, benchmark information, on families in Michigan. Then the survey that I mentioned on racial and sex employment patterns which I did was also published by this group. Then we published a trilogy, a series of three books, on the philosophical studies in home economics, which was written by Marjorie Brown. These were well received, especially the last. Well, the first two were really reference materials. The last one was very well received by people within home economics, who were searching for a philosophical understanding of this field. Marjorie Brown was perhaps our most intellectual philosopher within the field during that period of time, and probably ever.
During the eighties, I also worked with the Office of the Provost to develop and then to establish an MSU Administrative Internship Program, because I felt that we needed to have people have opportunities to see what administration was like, to experience what administration was, to know something of the tasks that were involved, something of the perceptions that were required, and so forth, so that people would be interested in entering administrative positions.

Charnley: Was this for faculty or students?

Lund: These would be mostly graduate students and normally Ph.D. students, although it could also be faculty. It was open to faculty. It was patterned after the ACE Presidential Internship Program that had been around for a number of years.
I have for many years maintained contact with international home economists and international programs in several countries, in South America, in India, in Korea, in particular. The programs in Korea eventually took on the title of human ecology in part because of interaction that they had with me, and was instrumental in helping those programs see that there was research potential in areas other and areas in addition to human nutrition.

Charnley: You traveled to those areas and helped set up those programs?

Lund: Yes, I have traveled. I haven’t helped set them up. I did most of it by telephone and by writing and by some travel, but not being there. I also had some assistance from Dr. Bobbitt who was my associate dean, who did interact with these people. But it was nice to have that affiliation.
The community services external master's degree program that I commented about earlier, I think was a very good program in starting people doing international work and being comfortable in doing international work. Sometimes the problem is the comfort level, achieving a comfort level for faculty.
The last thing that I wanted to comment on is the development of the development fund program. It was simply nonexistent when I arrived in 1973. Together with my associate dean, we worked to establish strong affiliations with alumni and emeriti and college friends. There was no support staff extended at this time. We did it ourselves. What we did was to establish a human ecology national alumni and emeriti network. Through personal contacts and travel all over the United States, we were able to increase the college development fund support, real and pledged, from 1972, which was under 13,000, to over a million by 1985, which was quite an achievement in its day. Nowadays, with the kind of support you can get, where someone is doing this all the time, you could do far better.

Charnley: So it was nonexistent at the university support for--

Lund: It didn’t exist. It wasn’t considered as being necessary, apparently.

Charnley: Did you face any opposition within the university?

Lund: No. They were happy we would do it. Anytime you can get money, you know.

Charnley: Was there any major success that you can point to? Was it through an individual or a corporate contribution? Anything that stands out?

Lund: Primarily through alumni and friends. Several of our alumni would leave like one and two hundred thousand, at a stroke, in their wills, would identify it as part of their will. Most of it was relatively small increments of maybe fifty, sixty thousand, that were given. You were just happy to receive any kind of support. Even to receive verbal support made you feel good, because you knew that they had you in mind.
Well, nowadays, there is an organized structure on how to get money from friends and so forth, but in those days, my associate dean and I sat down and said, “What can we do to achieve this? What is the very best way to achieve this?” Whenever we made a trip anyplace, we visited with all of the alumni we could meet in that area to explain what were doing and to ask for their support. It did pay off, but it was enormously exhausting work on top of everything else.

Charnley: Personal contact that you had to make?

Lund: Yes. But it was rewarding to see that they appreciated and were willing to give.

Charnley: Associated with that, did you organize any on-campus like an annual activity in conjunction with homecoming, or anything?

Lund: Oh, yes. We always had lots of that sort of stuff. There was always something relative to homecoming. We also had a Human Ecology College Day, or something of that sort, I can’t remember what it was called, in which we had guest speakers. It usually was a whole morning of lectures and so forth and so on, and then a luncheon and always a speech by the dean, which we tried to bring to them not only what we were doing, but also ask for their help. That was well attended for many, many years. Then it sort of faded, because it’s a kind of thing that many people have other things to do. So it sort of faded. I think it was phased out finally sometime in the eighties. But, yes, we did do those. I didn’t mention those, whether it was something every weekend. [Laughter]
You asked about administrative style. I’m interested in administration. I really am. I find administration extremely intriguing; that is, trying to help people do the job that they say they want to do.

[Begin Tape 2, Side 2]

Charnley: We were talking about administrative style. You were commenting about how you saw yourself as a facilitator.

Lund: That’s right. I see myself as having provided support and opportunity where it was appropriate and where it would be advantageous. I think of myself as being open, but able and willing to make hard decisions if necessary, where necessary. I believe in participative management and I believe in anticipatory planning. I believe in planning that allows you to anticipate what might happen and to think about the consequences of actions. So many people make decisions, but they never think of the end consequences, and I think you have to anticipate what might be going to happen, and even sometimes when it’s bad what might happen, you still have to make a decision, but at least you are ready for it.

Charnley: So long-term planning’s important.

Lund: Very much. My cup of tea. I enjoy long-term planning. I enjoy financial planning. I think of myself as being open to new ideas and new techniques. I’m willing to experiment.
I really do believe it’s important to recognize and to appreciate faculty contributions in all sectors: research, teaching, and service. They are all critically important and all valuable, and I do not believe in giving credit to one sector without giving credit to other sectors.
I try to respect staff and other co-workers, because they are the front face of any unit. Your secretary is more important than you are, frequently, in presenting a face to the people. I’m a very strong supporter of equity and diversity, to the point of arguing on behalf of equitable treatment in particular.
I am a strong believer that a knowledgeable faculty is essential to wise decision-making within units and within colleges. I don’t believe faculty who know nothing and understand less can make wise decisions. I think that when administration doesn’t share with them sufficient information so that they can make wise decisions, that we have done our faculty a serious injustice. I feel the same way about politics. I’m willing to wait, if necessary, for faculty to comprehend, unless change is necessary. I’m willing to move ahead if it’s essential, when you can’t wait. I believe in