Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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Jack Kelly
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, New York
Transcribed by Wai Yen Oo
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections




Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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Transcript
:
Jack

Kelly

Interviewee:
Jack Kelly
Interviewer:
Gus Nolan
Interview Date:
23 September 2008
Location:
Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Topic:
Marist College History
Subject Headings:

Kelly, Jack


Marist College Faculty


Marist College – History


Marist College (Poughkeepsie, NY)


Marist College – Social Aspects
Summary:
In Part 2, Dr. Jack Kelly talks about his role as the Chair of the Business Department and later the Dean of
the School of Management. He discusses his role in acquiring the AACSB accreditation for the Marist Business School. He
talks about the variety of difficulties in achieving the certification and his involvement with Deans of other colleges and
universities to make it happen. He additionally gives his thoughts on the education in Marist College, the faculty, the
programs, and where he sees Marist College going in the future.






Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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00:06
GN:
It's Today is Tuesday, September 23
rd
and we're continuing in part two of an interview with
Dr. Jack Kelly, the retired Dean of the School of Management.

00:23
JK:
Gus, how are ya?

00:24
GN:
We’re back. The second session, Jack, I'd like to focus on the development of the school
as such and how things came to be as they are now. I’d like to start at the end in a way. And then see
how we get there. You talked about AASCB

00:47
JK:
AACSB.

00:48
GN:
A…A…S

00:57
JK:
Used to be known as the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. And it’s
now known as the Associate to Advance the Collegiate Schools of Business. (AACSB).

01:15
GN:
Well, what is it?

01:17
JK:
It’s an accreditation agency. Well it’s more than that. It’s an organization of four-year and
graduate schools of business administration. It’s designed to promote quality education in the
education of business administration and accounting. And similar type degrees. And it is also an
accreditation agency and for years, it was very difficult accreditation because their accreditation
standards were strictly quantitative. You needed so many PhDs and X percent of your faculty had to
be full-time. You had to have Ph Ds etc. So that only all, back in the 80s probably only, two hundred
schools in the country achieved that accreditation. There are probably three thousand and thirty-five
hundred colleges and universities that offer degrees in business administration. In the …and.

02:22
GN:
Now when you say business, is that undergraduate?

02:25
JK:
Undergraduate. Primarily.

02:27
GN:
And this association focuses more on the graduate…?

02:30
JK:
No focuses on the total business education. The standards are higher if you have a
graduate program. And there are very few but there's just a couple of institutions that have graduate
programs that have no undergraduate. And in the probably late 80s, maybe early 90s, they changed
their accreditation standards to be mission-driven. Declare the mission and the institution. And then
you had to prove that you had the faculty, the curriculum, the research, etc. to support that mission.
And you had to prove it. So it was assessment-driven. So since it was mission-driven and the mission
of an institution like Marist will be different than the University of Michigan, schools like Marist had a
chance. And that’s when we started a major drive towards the AACSB accreditation. There are other
regional groups of business schools. There’s a thing called MAACBA. The Middle Atlantic
Association of Colleges of Business Administration. M, A, A, C, B, A. And that’s all the four-year
business schools in the Middle Atlantic states and Puerto Rico. And I was lucky enough to be the
president of the organization. Sat on the board for many years. They did not do accreditation. Only
the AACSB. So what is it? It's a… going back all the way to the 1820s, business schools were the
cash cows of a lot of universities. But they never got many resources from the universities but they
provided a lot of income. And this was an attempt to bring collegiate business education up to a truly
collegiate level for student graduate degrees and the faculty, fostering research, making it the
equivalent of any engineering or liberal arts program. That's what was really behind the AACSB
originally.


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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04:37
GN:
And why would you want it?

04:39
JK:
You would want it because well, one would be… My reason primarily was because of the
prestige that you could meet the standards of any other top-level collegiate institution of business
could. There were other mercenary(?) reasons. There were many grants and many big firms that
would only recruit or fund AACSB-accredited institutions. So in order to get into that you had to have
that accreditation.

05:08
GN:
And is it true that there’s some foreign governments will only pay the students to come
here to study if it’s business in such an institution?

05:15
JK:
That was also true.

05:20
GN:
Okay. So that's the end of the story. We've got that. We got that after many years of
plotting and planning and bringing people in and advisors and so on. When did that idea become a
possibility in your mind? Would be somewhere along in the mid-80s or 70s…or?

05:40
JK:
Probably before that. Probably in the 70s that I really became aware of it and realized how
far we had to go. Back in the 70s, when I first got Marist to join the AACSB. There were two classes
of membership. One was an accredited member and one was just an assembly member. And we
were an assembly member. And it was true that I really got to meet a lot of other Deans and find out
what's going on and saw all of the things about the standards that came up. And realized just how
valuable such an accreditation would be. So virtually every personnel decision, the curriculum
decisions that I ever made, had a view towards that. But until they changed accreditation standards
to being mission driven. I knew we didn't have a shot. But once they did that. I knew we had a great
shot and started really moving for now… that would have been in the 80s.

06:41
GN:
And the process of actually getting certified is the end result of visitation by their …

06:49
JK:
You have to… First of all, you had to have yourself set up to meet their standards.
Meaning that you must be a school. You must have a Dean. You must have the budgetary authority.
You must have faculty that have degrees in the field in which they are teaching. You must be able to
prove research in the fields of which they are teaching. You have to have a mission that’s fully
accepted and have to be able to fully document the mission. All of that took a number of years once
we’re at that stage. You apply for candidacy. Candidacy brings a team in and you're either accepted
or rejected for candidacy. We were accepted for candidacy. And then you have a five-year plan that
is part of the candidacy and then you are examined. And each of those five years, you are assigned
an advisor so that the idea is the plan is going to take you from candidacy which is the initial step
through accreditation if you can achieve everything in that plan. So every one of those years for the
five years, you are evaluated by the AASCB. But you have an AASCB-accredited Dean as your
advisor. We had Deans from different institutions over those years. And that person also writes a
report. And then ultimately then a full-blown visit comes in at the fifth year, candidate’s fifth year. And
you are really granted an accreditation or not. And it’s every…like Middle States, every five to ten
years.

08:20
GN:
This visit every five years, so they know that you are maintaining a level of
professionalism?

08:25

JK:
Correct.

08:28

GN:
OK. So that's the end of the game. Now let's rewind the tape to ‘61 before you came here.


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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What was here?

08:40
JK:
They had a B.A. in business administration in. And it was there when I came in the fall of
’62 but I'm not sure if it was there before. It may have just started when I came. But it was a bachelor
of arts in business administration. It was only about seven or eight courses, period. Total.
Completely. And it was…

09:14
GN:
That included that. Then we had listed here. The principles of economics. Introduction of
finance. Accounting and management.

09:23
JK:
Yes. And That was about it. It was a basic finance, marketing, personnel course. A year of
accounting, a year of economics. Basic math and stats.

09:33
GN:
Statistics was required in college algebra. And then they took the regular core courses for
the liberal arts.

09:42
JK:
Correct. And virtually all of their electives were in the liberal arts. Because there was
nothing else to take electives in.

09:49
GN:
Okay. You work with a very small staff in those first years and. You can count on one
hand the number of people who are actually teaching right here.

09:59
JK:
It was Brother Cornelius and myself and Pete Farrell. And I think John Griffin. We were the
first four.

10:06

GN:
Sal Catalano was not here?

10:08

JK:
He was a part-time. He was not full-time. There was a bunch of part-timers. It was Pete
Farrell, …, John Griffin and myself and Brother Cornelius. And then, we had people like Sherlock. But
then, people like Farrell left. So when I think of some of these names, I don’t know whether they were
new additions or replacements. When I think of accountants, Farrell, Fred Jorden, Fred Van Tassel
and so on. All the way up to… Walsh. Greg Tully. So we ended up with like three PhD accountants in
my last years.

11:04
GN:
Are these just daytime courses? Has the night program has been put in place here?

11:11
JK:
Yes, the night and the day was the same program. There was no distinction.

11:16
GN:
But there was an evening school? You could take courses at night.

11:19
JK:
Yes you could in fact…

11:21
GN:
Before you came, could that have happened?

11:23
JK:
I believe so. But more of the business courses were probably toward night than towards
the day. Because the evening population was larger than the day population.

11:36
GN:
And then the business came from a number of places though. Didn't it? It wasn't just
I.B.M. Maybe you had some school teachers, maybe …

11:45
JK:
Well the central Hudson was another big one. Then you had county seat employees for


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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both Kingston and Poughkeepsie. We had certain hospital employees, not so much nurses but as
business staff people from not only Saint Francis but Kingston as well as Benedictine.

12:05
GN:
Did New Paltz have such a program?

12:08
JK:
New Paltz also had a business program but it was run out of their economics department.
And they were kind of competitive a little bit for the day-hops, not for the full-time students. […]

12:20
GN:
Then along with this is the summer program as well as the fall on the evening. And what is
…the intercession … how we figured out all of these pieces to put something together? And your
thoughts?

12:36
JK:
Yeah. I can remember the early years. Basically we tried to get our entire curriculum in
over a two-year period. Because most of the students really didn’t really get into the major until their
junior year. They might have a course here and there but… the first major decision I made as chair
was to have an accounting program. We had natural science and accounting because we had a
strong request from students for an accounting program. And then we changed to the B.A. to the B.S.
in Business. I think we did that the same time that we put in the accounting program. All of the
programs were offered at night. I don’t think we ever had a program that was solely night and not in
day or solely day and not in night.

13:29
GN:
I see. There was a host of part-timers who were participating to fulfill those… two […]

13:34
JK:
We had. We might actually probably had twenty plus part-timers. We've always had a
series of adjuncts. Some who had been… were with us for years like Jim Faye in Accounting who
was here as long as I was. Others almost as long, people like Saul Kassow in Law. He was here for
years, years, and years. Some were full-timers who went elsewhere and came back as part-timers
like Fred van Tassel. I am just trying to think of other part-timers that were around for a long time…
some were around a long time and then, you know, moved away, like Jim McGovern who was key in
the very early years.

14:26
GN:
Okay. Tell me this. When were the seeds planted for the graduate program? Because it
seems to me that Dan Kirk and you were on a similar mind that Psych would be a good place to go.
Community Psych. The MBA would also be ... Is that in conjunction? Is there a plan afoot to do that?
You have to go to the faculty and get approval? We have all that stuff in place already?

14:56
JK:
Right. No, all of that had to be done and I always looked upon that as just the sign of the
maturation of the institution. I mean, you know that was kind of like that next step. That was probably
in the 70s. That we started thinking along those lines and I’m not even sure that the MBA came in.

15:18
GN:
I have a note here that in 1969, there was a planning meeting made to begin this and
maybe in ’70-71, there was …an implementation with an approval for […]

15:36
JK:
Stephanie… sticks in my mind. Because that was in the same timeframe. So that's was
something… At the time, I was torn because I felt the MBA would dilute some of the resources that I
really wanted for an AACSB accreditation. But at the time, I knew we can never achieve an AACSB
accreditation because the standards haven’t changed yet. That the way the standard was written, we
would have great difficulty. So, I, to a certain extent, acquiesced to the M.B.A. I was very worried
about the dilution effect it might on the thrust of our undergraduate program. And in fact, ten, fifteen
years later when we were actually coming up for candidacy, I seriously considered deleting the M.B.A
and becoming solely an undergraduate institution because I thought it might give us some leg up on


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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the AACSB accreditation. And then when we started to plan and AACSB assigned advisors, deans
from other institutions … And I had so many the close Dean friends of the other bigger institutions,
Villanova and places like that. That I felt more comfortable that we could do it. That the MBA might
dilute a little bit in the undergraduate and that it would give me a leg up in attracting in certain faculty
that I needed because I could tell the faculty, “You’re teaching a graduate course.”

17:04
GN:
Is there a close institution that had this accreditation that you’re aiming already in place?
Like Iona or Fairfield?

17:13
JK:
Well Iona and Fairfield both beat us. But the one I relied heaviest on was Villanova.
Partially because the Dean and I were very close.

17:27
GN:
Okay. That's the beginning of the process now for this. And at the same time, the need
was here just because of the number of graduates we had from business already. The area was with
for more graduate education.

17:42
JK:
Yeah. It’s again… that I deal with this kind of not only maturation of the institution but the
maturation of the whole Hudson Valley. We were starting in the Middle Hudson Valley. We were
restarting the economic development centers that were going on here. The IBM, that other company
splitting off and starting up. Central Hudson was now reused. The hospitals were expanding. You
know. So that it was kind of a recognition of the whole area. We had done a study and we saw that
there was a … it wasn’t used but we saw that we could certainly support a graduate program with
one hundred or less students.

18:30
GN:
Right. It’s a little ironic from what I’ve heard. IBM did not welcome such a program. What
would the explanation be…or is that true?

18:39
JK:
That is true because they were… They view themselves in those years as strictly a
technological corporation. And they would throw their support towards graduate technology degree.
But they felt that business administration was not as important for them as a Master’s in Computer
Science or something like that. And that was true. They would not support the MBA student to the
same extent. It was something to the extent of…you know, for the Masters in Computer Science, they
might pay up front. For the MBA, they would only reimburse of a certain percentage. Something
along those lines.

19:25
GN:
Okay. And then you were not invited to make a presentation on their campus about such a
program?

19:30
JK:
And that is correct. We were not. Although we did. I did talk to …maybe it was a chamber.

19:43
GN:
Okay. Moving on how is your own staff? As regards to this, were they satisfied with the
status quo or were they anxious to go with the advancement?

19:56
JK:
It was a mixed bag. And I brought many of them into my conformance to different levels.
Because some of them I knew could not remain. Many of them could not remain. Those that were
really interested solely in teaching were, you know, not interested in getting another graduate degree,
terminal degree. Those who are not interested in research, who are not overly fond of the push
towards. Those who were … had terminal degrees who were starting to write saw that this would
enhance their position as well as the institution’s position. And they were some who just knew that
this was the right thing for Marist even though it may hurt them in the long run. I think of somebody
who will never live to see it. Somebody like John Griffin, he hadn't finished his doctorate. That would


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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have actually been a difficult situation. Once the accreditation came along, of course, you can
grandfather a couple of people in. He would have been one. But he just knew that this is a sign of
maturation, this is a sign of progress, prestige, of where the institution should go.

21:14
GN:
Would you say that you had to work the faculty? Not your faculty but the faculty at large.
Since this is going to come to a vote on progress towards… to be first of all. And then will it be able to
pay for itself? I recall Fairfield itself sent me a letter. When they were closing down the Master’s
Degree in Communication, it was for the reason that it was not supporting themselves. And we were
wondering if they would be a same kind of philosophy here. If you didn't support yourself, would you
have been able to go along with it? Question…it’s theoretical.

21:59
JK:
I don't know. I personally probably would not have tried to continue with if it wasn't
supporting itself. Because I also had a prior concern that it might dilute the resources that I really
wanted to do for the undergraduate program to gain that AACSB. In I had other words that AACSB
accreditation was driving everything I did. And so even if it was paying for itself and was significantly
impacting in my undergraduate education. I might have been willing back off. But to get to your first
question, “Did I have to work the faculty?” I did. But it's interesting. The general faculty at large was
more concerned with the impact on their own professional lives because of my emphasis on the
research the faculty were gonna have to do and they didn't want that translated into their fields. There
was a lot of resistance from quote, “the teaching faculty” to the research orientation of AACSB. Which
was not a dramatic research orientation but it was simply said that every faculty members should be
able to prove every year that they're working on something professional. That will lead to publication
or presentation. Something along those lines. And I can still remember some general faculty meeting
and I can remember people by name that who were very uptight that…the same ?? to change. They
wouldn’t argue of course that they weren’t doing research. They would simply argue that it was going
to change the character of the institution.

23:49
GN:
But I would specifically drive the question. I mean I have a clear vision of Dan Kirk who
was anxious in the psych program, moving along to get the Master’s Degree. You know coming in,
working in the faculty, made it particular to work with other people. Together to swing vote that this
would go through the faculty and the advantage it would bring to the college. I just never thought of
the other side of the campus. That the business people would be involved in the same kind of pursuit.
But for you, it was a mixed bag. It could go one way or the other.

24:24
JK:
It was at the time. And I saw it as a growth. I saw it as a maturation. I saw it a step-up for
us. But I saw it…as a potential recruiting device to get the type of faculty that I knew we ultimately
had to have and are here now. Now that was one of my biggest pushes but I was afraid of what it
might do. I saw other advantages with graduate teachings, you drop the nine hours. That was a huge
advantage of me, who was putting pressure on faculty to do professional work. And having a reduced
load. It’s almost impossible to hire a doctorate in business administration telling them to do research
and teach four course which is not gonna happen.

25:16
GN:
. And of course the line … the other kind of budgetary concerns is periodicals and library
holdings and that kind of staff to assist with some of this. That seem to be to be a big question mark.
Especially since there was some financial crises in the late 70s and the early 80s.

25:36
JK:
One of the things we did is… Harvard’s business school library is called the Baker Library.
And the Baker Library published a guide and it was a guide to business holdings of libraries with just
undergraduate programs, undergraduate/small Masters programs, doctoral programs and et cetera.
We ordered a bunch of copies of that guide. We used it in my entire professional career. And we
would rip them apart and we would circle them. I would give them, let’s say in the marketing, to the


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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marketing profs circle everything you want and put it more a priority. And I handed them to the
librarian and just say, “When you can order, you order according to these lists.” So our library would
never squander funds on somebody’s pet works. And yet not have the basic core that we would need
towards the ultimate AACSB accreditation. The one area where that did not hold true was we had in
the 1960s, one of the finest collections on solely economics. (laughter) Because there wasn’t that
much written. We had just about everything that was written.

26:49
GN:
. I might add as a footnote that the PMLA, the Modern Language Association Publication.
We had every copy ever published. A few libraries do. George Somer who was insistent on getting
his cut of the apple, if I can use that poor analogy. Okay. I'm moving on here in terms of ... It seems
to be quite familiar to you. But it's not as clear in my mind because we're talking about a thirty- or
thirty-five-year period. And I'm trying to say it's just as I look at the campus, there’s such a radical
change. In the coming of the students, there had to be, you know, a bottom of interest, desire,
presence of students to want all that you are envisioning. In other words, you have developed the
department and now you have concentrations within the department. So you…does it go… was it the
chicken or egg? Were the students there who needed these diverse offerings? Or were there diverse
offerings and then we put students into them? You know.

28:10
JK:
I think a lot of it came from my associations with AACSB and AACBA. And I knew what
was going on in the collegiate business education across the country. And we were meeting the very
standard mode. I mean other than the huge institutions where we'd get a B.S in marketing or B.S in
Finance. Those that had the generic business administration and that's what we had and we were
modeled after.

28:46
GN:
And did we copy that from someone? Or was that your own feelings…

28:51
JK:
That was… It’s basically... it's traditional. That’s the standard one that everybody has so in
that sense you could say you copied it. But from another sense as I described to you this morning,
when you think about in any operating enterprise, you've got the four basic functions. There’s your
personnel course, marketing course, your finance course and your production course. You need
accounting, economics, math, computer science et cetera. And so, I knew that we offered what all of
our competition was offering and what virtually all business schools were offering. There was a
continual requests from students for more marketing courses or more finance courses. More
personnel courses. So we came up with the concentrations. We limited those to three courses. After
a while, we actually had to offer four and five. We never required four and five but we never required
four and five. It’s just giving students more choice.

29:51
GN:
Were they in sequence? Did they have to take A before you took B?

29:55
JK:
Well, you had have the basic courses. So for example, you had to have the basic
personnel before you could take any of the concentration courses in the personnel. You got to have
the basic marketing. And then you can take any of the others. And there might be an occasional…
one that had more prerequisites like marketing research. You always had to have at least a statistics
course before you can take that. And we resisted the student. I wouldn’t say demands. A student
request for additional requirements in the area. Because we said at a baccalaureate level, this was
my argument, you want breadth. You're going to get in depth in your area of choice, say finance.
You’re going to have three or four finance courses here and if you want more finance, then you go
get it an M.S. in Finance. In my advice, don’t even do that unless you work for a year or two. And
then you have the appropriate credentials in my opinion.

30:55

GN:
Well, the requirements were rather stringent that to fulfill the obligations of your course for


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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the B.S or B.A. earlier. There are a number of required courses. And therefore internships were not…
really going to be a part of it.

31:17

JK:
Well, internship is an interesting thing. The college is always been big supporter of the
internships. Dr. Jack Kelly as Dean never really was a huge supporter of the internships.

31:32

GN:
I’m familiar with his position. (laughter)

31:36
JK:
I guess my reason was. Well it was multi-faceted. One, I was very concerned with what I
always called slave labor. I saw far too many businesses take what they called were interns. And
instead of giving them impressive learning experiences or decent pay, they would paying them with
college credit and. And I used to joke with the way that I used to talk about it is… I said, every
accounting firm in town used to tell me about great internships they had every January. And all they
wanted was slave labor. To avoid tax forms. I can remember an insurance company that actually
brought the president to my office. He was so upset with me. I had turned down internships. Well
when I talked to the guy in charge there, his internships was going to be cold calling.

32:34

GN:
Oh.

32:35

JK:
For insurance and I didn't think that was a worthwhile.

32:38

GN:
Telephone techniques’ very important. (laughter)

32:43

JK:
Certain companies like IBM put together very meaningful internships for major universities
and then they allowed the Marist kids into it too where they deliberately moved them into positions
where they sought inter-functional relationships between the different functions of management. And
they actually partook seminars on the site in the firm, talking about these relationships and how the
personnel in finance had to interact and through marketing and so on. Those were meaningful work
experiences and I had no qualms with. But I have qualms of what I thought was a cheap way to earn
credits and there really wasn’t a meaningful learning experience.

33:29
GN:
Yeah, this two approaches I suppose… There's such a thing as taking a three or six credit
and a fifteen. You know twenty-one credit in internship because then you’re not at the college at all.
You’re at the company.

33:44
JK:
That's right and then my argument then, I can remember making it in those days when I
was here. Are we college or are we a training institution?

33:55
GN:
Ah yes. Okay. Another area that I wanted to hear you out on is the use of computers A. on
side and B. Long distance learning in business. How do you see that will be?

34:11
JK:
Well. But that’s changed of course, dramatically in the large decade. First of all, you can't
have … be educated in business unless you have great facilities with computers today. You know it's
everything is computerized and not just the mathematical models. But you can run all these
spreadsheets, your folders, you can do interrelationships from them. You can design and so on and I
can remember when I was doing my doctorate and a big piece of my dissertation was statistical
analysis. And I used to do one of the big motion with the hand called handle. And it would take me
about twelve hours to run one statistical tests inputting and running all of this data. And then a family
member who taught here, Bob Valmer programmed did for me but it was way back in the early
computers with the cards. And in a matter of minutes, I was running the same tests that was taking
me hours previously. So you have to be totally familiar with computers today and just an intro course


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



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is not enough. It’s got to be used every single course that you're dealing with. In terms of education,
read a computer, that’s in the long-distance education. I mean it is a fact of life and it will exist in the
modern world because people simply don't have the wherewithal in terms of time or finances to be a
full-time resident students at an institution. Many of them don’t. If it wasn't for that technology there
are many people that would never have a degree. You know a minority housewife in an urban center
et cetera. It's only the way she could get this degree and they are masterful if they could do that. Is it
the same quality of learning that takes place in the traditional college? I'm sure there are those that
will say there is. I doubt it. I simply do not believe that. There is a dynamic that exists in a class
between the students and the professor that you simply cannot duplicate in the machine. You can
enter chatrooms and the students can chat with each other and the professor. And the e-mails can fly
back and forth. And the instant messaging flying back and forth. It is not the same as that discussion
that takes place in the classroom and the one in the classroom… in my opinion.

36:41
GN:
Right. The situation that they are moving into now. In terms of the Congress passing what
is similar to World War 2 Bill rights for the G.I.s more than likely will make money available for these
returning vets. That's to participate in education. If they can't come to campus, it might be well that
they at least have that opportunity.

36:12
JK:
Absolutely. I mean when I went to college, many of my classmates were vets under the
WWII Korean GI Bill. So I'm a big believer in that and I'm also a believer in that education should be
available because not everybody can afford 35,000 dollars to go away to a private, residential, full-
time institution or even going into a community college’s going to cost. I'd prefer the education that
can mix and match the modalities. Because I can see where somebody because of family and work
can’t always be in class but if they can take some classes and mix and match them with one while
you learning you know the courses so on. That’s a step up than just locking yourself in a room with a
computer and spending an equivalent of four years and coming out with a degree. Well that degree is
technically probably OK. The technical knowledge is probably OK. I just don't take it the breath of
education again it’s like the colleges that offer this offsite learning where you just read the books and
so on. And take the test.

38:35

GN:
Then take the test. You just don't have no interaction with anybody.

38:39

JK:
And You know. I told you before privately and we've had faculty here that have had
degrees from institutions like that. And I found that they could name-drop like crazy of the books that
they read. But they had verbally no depth beyond the introductory statements in their area. That
comes from the debate, discussion et cetera. That you don’t have.

39:00
GN:
And I… GI Bill of course. More than likely they're all and would be older folks I think it's still
imperative though that youngsters coming out of high school have a campus experience. You know
for the social development as well as for the interaction. You know, that come from teachers,
scholars…

39:20
JK
:
I agree. I agree. I mean you know we always talk about how much learning takes place out
of the classroom. And it really does and if you walk down the corridor and you just could listen to
students talking to the faculty in their offices. Students sitting in a room debating an issue or a
problem. That’s where tremendous learning takes place that you just don’t have when you’re
dealing…with the people.

39:44
GN:
Right. In a view of looking back now, all those thirty years. Again that, the question
about… were you ever discouraged? In the movement. Were there obstacles that looks like they
were unsurpassable? Were there particular helps that moved you on? Did Louis ever say, let’s give


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



12

up this and go west…?

40:09
JK:
There were a couple points. I was seriously considered for the presidency. That was a real
tough decision. And we weren't sure for years afterwards that we made the wrong decision. But right
now I don’t think so because now I look back and you know at the time for me, the presidency was
just a step up but I didn't realize at that time. How important it is for a president to have a wider view
of the finances and the fundraising and the building. I was much more concerned with inside the
building, the students. So I would probably have always made a better Dean than I would have of the
president and. I was frustrated at how long it took us to get schools and Deans. Because I knew that
that was the first major step that I needed for AACSB. And that took forever. Ten to twenty years for
that to happen. I took the lead in becoming a division. Because I saw it as a half-step. We’ll get there.
And I was disappointed I guess in most of the vice presidents and academic vice president or Deans
as they were earlier. And none of them seem to have that desire to move ahead and achieve these
outside accreditations. And I was disappointed in that none of the others here in Marist, during my
tenure for the most part, saw the value in my outside relationships, my professional relationships.
And none of them ever did it. Most of them never were really involved with Deans from other
institutions. I was the first one in a tenured case to actually send an attendant file out to deans from
other institutions, asking for them to comment on it. Because I knew that they knew what was needed
for AACSB. And they could say no, that doesn't really cut it or it does so on. Marc vanderHeyden was
the first that really saw all of that. He saw the need to get outside of Marist. And I think the most
satisfying professional aspects of my career have been in my work outside of Marist. With the
accreditations… Middle States and AACSB. I found that extraordinarily satisfying. I’ve been blessed. I
mean, most people in the career, they’d do Middle States and they are lucky to get accreditation.
They get three or four in their entire career. I had thirty state visits from New York State alone. I’d
done in Pennsylvania. I’d done it in New Jersey. Every time I go on to another campus, which is now
numbering well into the hundreds, I am amazed at how much I learned. Even if it’s negative… That
you can apply back to not only your own life but your professional life and to Marist. And they helped
me. I can remember one time. Having a search committee. And they were in my conference room. I
was reading a resume and it was a minority PhD accountant. This was like twenty years ago. This
was like unheard of. And I saw that he was at another institution where I knew the Dean. So I called
him right away while the candidate was there. The Dean simply said, “Put him on the train.” I said, we
haven’t even had lunch yet. He said, don’t waste your time. Put him on the train. And we shared
personnel. We had a lot people that moved up and down. I saw mistakes being made here. I
saw…Deans from other institutions called me and said, “Are you people crazy? Did anybody called to
check on them?” I said, “No.”

44:51
GN:
That leads us to another question about those decisions. Are there some decisions you
wish you did make that you didn't? Like calling people or... I don't know if I don't want to get personal
about it in terms of individuals. But maybe directions of the Department, a new aspect of that we
should have?

45:20
JK:
I made mistakes. It was probably in the area of the computer science, computer
information technologies, and not getting more involved in that. Partially that was because I didn't
understand it. And again I'm going to come back to my single-minded drive AACSB. I didn't want
anything to dilute what we were trying to do there. So I could afford to have … In fact, my … wanted
to have the IT area in school of management. But that was going to create another burden because I
was going to have a bunch of people that didn’t necessarily have doctorates and it’s not what I
needed to make the move towards AACSB. I wanted the MPA attached to liberal arts so they could
go over there. And kind of get it out from my hair. Because again I thought at the time it might create
a problem. But in fact it actually brought in some doctorates to help us in the final analysis. So, other
than that, I’m very glad we never went overboard in the undergraduate education. You know we have


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



13

room for the concentrations. The M.B.A is still somewhat ambivalent in my mind. But I do know now
that it did help me get key faculty. The graduate education teaching body… I’m sorry that Marist
didn’t take a broader outside view. I guess if I have one regret, that’s it. I really thought that I was one
of the few that took an outside view of education and got involved.

47:06
GN:
Become more into the collegiate…

47:11
JK:
Relationships. Right. And it was much too colloquial here. I think that's changed now. But
that bothered me for a long time. And I couldn't get anybody really interested in it. It’s amazing. I
mean when Gerry’s offered the Dean, it got me involved in the Middle States going back to the early
70s I guess. Late 60s maybe even. I couldn’t believe how anyone else was getting involved in these
things. And in the fact that it was never encouraged here to get involved in those types of things. To
me that was a big mistake artists. I counselled people, particularly in the later stage of my career
when we had money. We could some of these things to get involved. You know. It will pay to do with
somebody else maybe even in other institutions. Get to those meetings. Meet some of those people.
Those networks viable to you. And it spreads the name of the institution. Because now you have
faculty in all sorts of places saying, “Yeah, I’ve heard of Marist. I was working with somebody. I met
somebody. I …”

48:26
GN:
Then it's like what we’re doing in sports. It’s like we’re getting out there. You know. And
playing the West Coast, you know, in football losing but now at least they know we’re in town.

48:35
JK:
At least, that you could say that well I was on a panel with that guy.

48:40

GN:
Have we reached the end of the rainbow, in terms of the development in the programs? Is
there another flower to bloom yet? That you’d like to see …in your view of it. Is there a…should we
try for a doctoral program?

49:00
JK:
I really think a doctoral program is a major new step that it would really change the
character of the institution. Masters can change it but you notice almost in fact, probably every
Masters’ that we have is closely aligned to the undergraduate programs. The same type of fields.
They are not huge programs. They are not taking away faculty…

49:29

GN:
It kind of slip into it. You know […]

49
:
32

JK:
The doctoral program is a totally different bird. I think Marist is…has matured as an
institution and now has a very nice niche that has gotten us into that is …very saleable, very
workable. It will continue as long as we don't let it deteriorate in any area. If it deteriorates… I mean
several these you could deteriorate in programming. You could deteriorate in faculty. You gotta keep
your faculty enthused and energized and working and getting out there. As I think tremendous faculty
all across the campus. I think I’m patting myself on the back, I think a lot came from the School of
Management. Those people started, getting out there. Getting that publicity. Translated into [trickled
down] … I saw that immediately in communications. It’s pretty much across the whole college. It’s got
to keep them energized and supportive to do that. And new blood coming in. He’s done a magnificent
job keeping the facilities gorgeous and the ground. But you got to keep that up because …

50:41
GN:
Doesn’t have to stay clean. It has to be kept clean.

50:44
JK:
Right. It’s going to deteriorate. And you got to make sure that your programs are current.
You can’t just let them sit there and be a 20-year-old degree. Particularly. Obviously. And we don’t.
Certainly in computers and so on. Are there new programs we haven’t gotten ourselves into? I have


Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



14

been tickled pink at the growth of the music and so on here. Of course I sang in the college Glee
Club, I wish there was something like that here. Now, it’s music all over the place.

51:15
GN:
. Yeah. You can shuffle to the football game. And you can see the band.

51:31
JK:
And I think that’s great. That was a piece that was missing. Is there any other piece
missing? I think we have …our traditional programs. I wouldn’t at all averse at seeing Philosophy and
Religion coming back as majors.

51:39
GN:
Yes, yes. That’s my follow up questions. If you had the opportunity to meet Dennis and
somebody on the Board and addressing the board, is there some little message that you want to
impart to them? What…yet is missing? What has to be kept in the same pace it is going? If not
enhanced.

52:04
JK:
The only thing I can really think of right away is. We used the term globalization and years
ago when I was teaching that meant globalizing the courses. So you could put a required course in
international management for example. I took the opinion of let’s not do that, let’s require every
professor at least to devote a week or two in every course to the international aspect of that course.
So your view is international. Marist has done a great job internationalizing its output. We have so
many kids now studying abroad and so on. What about doing more in the internal curriculum like
languages? And I’m going back to my age-old argument, don’t give me elementary 1 and 2,
intermediate 1 and 2. Why can’t we come up with certain types of language courses, specifically
designed for business majors to get involved in…Latin America? Communications major that want to
be involved with the multi-lingual communications area. Down the line.

53:22
GN:
So equip them with the basic tools here to be able to…?

53:25
JK:
And that takes a certain type of faculty. And maybe we don’t have the faculty here. I don’t
really know. I mean I’m not really on top of it anymore. I would love to see something like that done.
When I think of education in the next twenty, twenty-five years, what do I wish that they would have? I
would hope that wherever they go that they are still grounded in the arts, the liberal arts. I’m sorry
that liberal arts is being defined in America today to not necessarily include philosophy and religious
studies as requirements. It’s becoming more of…some of the social sciences. They are fine. They
have their place. But I’d like to see some of the more traditional…I would hope that regardless of
what they are major is, they truly have an international experience. That’s more than just study
abroad and international course. I’d love it to be language or literature. Something that relates to their
major. That they can really understand that culture. Maybe speak some language. That to me would
be very important. So many … because of the expense, I mean you talk to parent, after parent, after
parent, “They got to have a job soon as they get out.” I’m a little bit of an elitist and that bothers me a
little bit. I think college should be more than that. If that’s all we’re gonna do, you can go to DeVries
and become…a technical…

55:12
GN:
Keeping it at that, you talk about the values-based education. One of the values that has
been diluted here is that philosophy and theology kind of concept. Even Richard LaPietra’s fighting
hard to make sure that some religion be kept into the core. Because the world today, are they
concerned with religion? Just check the papers and see the last bombing. See what all this terrorist is
all about.

55:47
JK:
And you know we have no understanding of it in Washington. There’s no understanding of
the Muslim culture or religion in any of our policy statements. I’m editorializing but



Kelly, Jack, 23 September 2008, part 2



15

55:57
GN:
That’s alright. That’s where we’re going.

55:59

JK:
I’m upset with a lot of that. Yeah but how do you handle that? You have to educate a
generation of Americans that have an appreciation and a certain understanding of it. At least, the
ability to be able to research it on their own and read up the more on it when they have to.

56:18
GN:
And here we have to educate the faculty. To see if there is a reason for it. Bring it back
into the core. It seems to have less some of its impact in the recent discussion.

56:32
JK:
To me, General Education requirements is what makes the college degree a collegiate
experience. You get the major anywhere. That’s where you get the breadth of education. That’s what
makes one an educated man as opposed to… a learning technician. Major fields will always fight to
add to their requirements and dilute.

57:07
GN:
Jack it’s really good to talk to you. I must admit I did not see as a humanist, universal,
global person. You know I saw you more as the Chair of Business Department and Management. Yet
beneath it all, I am very interested in the renaissance man with an understanding of it all of where
we’re going. For my short editorial, I want to say thank you.