INTERVIEW WITH HELMUT EPP, PH.D. AS PART OF THE DR. HELMUT EPP ORAL HISTORY PROJECT PART I DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

Transcription

1 INTERVIEW WITH HELMUT EPP, PH.D. AS PART OF THE DR. HELMUT EPP ORAL HISTORY PROJECT PART I DEPAUL UNIVERSITY Interviewed by: Sarah E. Doherty, Ph.D. May 15, 2013

2 Sarah Doherty: This is Sarah Doherty interviewing Dr. Helmut Epp as part of the Dr. Helmut Epp Oral History Project on May 15, Dr. Epp thank you so much for sitting for an interview. [0:15] Helmut Epp: My pleasure. Doherty: Um. Over the course of the last few months I ve interviewed about twenty of your long time colleagues and friends um who have been giving some insight into all different areas of your long career at DePaul thus far. Um in a traditional oral history we d start at the very beginning. Start with early childhood and work our way all the way through your life, but for the purpose of this project I thought we d focus on the last almost forty years here at DePaul. Um. [0:42] Epp: I brought some of my baby pictures. [laughter] Doherty: We can look at those if you like. [0:46] Epp: No, it s alright. Doherty: Um. I thought we d start briefly with kind of the educational background your academic background that led you to DePaul in the first place? [0:53] Epp: Mm hmm. Um. I came to the United States at the age of thirteen soon to be fourteen, February And ah I first went to a middle school for a few months. Um in my third year beginning of my third year I was ah expelled. They couldn t actually expel me because I hadn t reached the age of sixteen. So they suspended me til I was sixteen and then they expelled me. Um. I took a course at the University of Chicago. They d admitted me as an early entrant. But, because of financial reasons I couldn t continue and they don t give scholarships to early entrants. Um. So. After a few years of exploring the country I ah tried to get into Northwestern as a freshman. And they said they couldn t do that because I didn t have a high school degree. However, ah there were no such restrictions for graduate programs so they admitted me to a PhD program. Doherty: And then um did you, you had a few steps before you ended up at DePaul once you completed your Ph.D. [2:45] Epp: That s correct. After I completed my PhD I got a job at the University of Illinois here in Chicago. And ah I think after two years I got a job at M.I.T. It was so called instructorship it s kind of an honorary thing. Um. Everybody people who get it stay there for two years. One of the more notable colleagues in that was that fellow I don t know if you saw that movie The Beautiful Mind. Doherty: Mm hmm. [3:28] Epp: He was in the same position. 1

3 Doherty: Ahh. [3:30] Epp: Ah so after two years I went back to the University of Illinois. My wife meanwhile had gotten a job here at DePaul and I joined DePaul then in Doherty: Ok. And how soon after joining DePaul did you start um transitioning into Computer Science? [3:49] Epp: Um. Actually the first job I ever had was when I was fifteen after I d been removed from high school. Um. An insurance company hired me as one of the first computer programmers in the city. Ah, that insurance company was CNA and my office was half a block away from here. So I knew about computers all along. Um. And but at the beginning when I came to DePaul I just taught the usual business math courses, low level courses which are not very exciting. Doherty: Um so how did you um develop Computer Science within Math and then eventually realize- [4:53] Epp: Well actually there were a couple courses already offered and what I did is expand those courses and eventually get a degree and so on. Doherty: Um. So at one point did you realize that Computer Science could kind of be a department separate from Math on its own and realize you had some of the faculty there already to help that process? [5:11] Epp: Ah. Yea. Um. There was. There were political problems within the Mathematics Department and the program had become so successful that that created um strains. And so I went to Pat Ewers who was then Dean of Liberal Arts and suggested that we ah split off to create a piece within the department and also give a chance for this new discipline to develop. Doherty: Excellent. Um. I know in some of the ah early years when Computer Science was growing as its own department then eventually as its own school um you were doing some outside consulting work with David Miller and Marty Kalin. [6:07] Epp: Yes. Doherty: Can you talk about some of the projects you worked on? [6:09] Epp: Yea I think the two biggest projects and one I worked with David and the other one I worked with Marty. The biggest project here in the city was to help schedule a steel plant. A steel plant uses machines that cost half a billion dollars or so. And it was very important since these machines were independent to make sure that they re running all the time and they do the right thing because any errors in scheduling can cost a lot of money. So ah 2

4 David Miller and I developed a system til, for all I know it s still running the steel mill. It was very interesting problem because theoretically scheduling complicated system is not a mathematically solvable problem. But my approach always was that we didn t have to find the perfect solution we just had to find a solution that was better than anything human beings could do. That that would be good enough. Doherty: Ah. Can you talk a little bit about some of your involvement with some of DePaul s digiti-, digitization processes- ah namely registration and eventually the launch of DePaul Central? [7:37] Epp: Ah yea early on our registration was essentially all on paper. And that was very awkward because we have two campuses and so there was registration downtown. For courses uptown they had to keep on calling do you still have that class open? And it was it was a real mess. So, David Miller and I took some of the computer terminals that we had in our department and wrote a program that allowed simultaneous registration at both ends. So it eliminated these problems and that was donated time on part of David and me and the equipment was also in effect donated for doing registration. Because now we have a much more sophisticated system. But, for a while it was used for several years and just replaced this paper and telephone system. Doherty: Um. Can you also talk about going from DePaul s homegrown um system to eventually kind of um moving to a more sophisticated system when so much more was being um computerized and digitized at the university? [9:00] Epp: I, I don t know exactly. I forget exactly how it happened, but I was asked to in addition to my job ah as chair um I was a dean I forget the precise time. I was asked to run the information technology area. There was some issues somebody left and so I ran it. And one of the first things I did is I put in all sorts of internet applications. So in that sense we were ahead of other universities. So for example a teacher would not only receive the listing of who was in the class, but also little pictures. Ah. Which now they have again, but we started to do many years ago. People wanted to know what was in their payrolls so we wrote applications for that. So we wrote a whole bunch of applications that people you know were using the internet in that sense we were far ahead than anybody else. But what we discovered we actually produced for more applications than the organization could actually absorb. We could have done far more, but it takes awhile for people to get used to it. [laughter] Doherty: Um. Many of your colleagues have mentioned um the word entrepreneur in describing you. [10:31] Epp: Yes. Doherty: And what you ve done for the university, um where would you say this entrepreneurial sense comes from, but I don t believe you went to business school at any point. [10:36] 3

5 Epp: That s right. Neither have most of the entrepreneurs in the world. [laughter] Business school is for entrepreneurs wanna bes. Anyway I wouldn t say so much I was an entrepreneur as much an opportunist. So when I saw certain things that were possible, I went ahead and did it. The other things was made pretty clear to me at the beginning that this was a tuition driven university and so to me the most important things were all of the students and enrollments. And so um to me it was just another practical problem. How can you improve the quality of your programs and how can you increase your enrollment? So. So I wouldn t have started a grocery store or something. It was just that I was in a situation where there were certain problems and I went ahead and tried to solve them. Doherty: Excellent. And if you wouldn t mind talking about some of the programs um that you developed when you saw these opportunities um like the Career Change Program? [11:51] Epp: Oh yes. I can tell you about that. That has a weird history. Ah. [coughing] At the time there was a tremendous shortage of people doing doing programming. And ah I remember attending a meeting, a large meeting with the president of what was then the most distinguished company in Chicago called Continental Bank. It made it invested in some bad oil wells in Oklahoma so it s no longer with us. But, at that time it was the premier institution and they invited us from the university and tried to tell us what we should teach. And one of the things they had was a six month training program called a fist program where they d teach people to program or become accountants. Ah. Because they felt universities weren t doing the job. So ah I thought about that and I thought that s something that we could do ourselves here. And I was actually inspired by one of my wife s cousins who ah had a divorce and had some financial problems and needed to get a job. And all her life she lived in wealthy circumstances. She didn t have any particular skills. And so I kind of invented this program and put her in it. And she did eventually work in this field. That program the so called Computer Career Program was totally dedicated to taking people who already had finished college because I didn t want to. Well I was trying to raise the input level and also didn t want people to think this was a college education and then in six months we produced people who could go to work and do productive work in the computer field. Doherty: Um. [14:21] Epp: And it was very successful. It made at the time when the university really needed money it made many many millions of dollars for the university. As well as changed many lives. Doherty: Um. In continuing along that vein can you also talk about the Institute for Professional Development? [14:35] Epp: Well that was an outcome of that. We had this program and personal computers were beginning to appear. I of course already had had one and had built my own sometime before. So, we developed something called an Executive Program where we took people and we gave them computers for the duration. They were so called portables, but they 4

6 weighed sixty pounds. And ah taught them the basic skills, spreadsheets and other things. And as we added other programs we thought of having all these special career type programs in one ah institution that was the Institute for Professional Development. Because registering them for these special programs and advertisings on were pretty much the same for every every one of these programs so it made sense to concentrate that. I should say by the way that I was incredibly facilitated in everything that I have done here by not having any opposition in fact support from the administration. When people refer to DePaul as entrepreneurial in those days, I don t think it was so much entrepreneurial, but that we had so few people to interfere with other people. There wasn t much bureaucracy. If we had more people it no doubt would have slowed down things significantly. Now of course we are in a different situation. [laughter] Doherty: Can you talk about the development of the satellite campuses as well and bring Computer Science to the satellite campuses? [16:37] Epp: Yes. Um. I can t say that I was ever particularly enthusiastic about satellite campuses. Um. The way they originated was through the School of New Learning. The School of New Learning started teaching at I believe the O Hare Campus. And the provost in charge then Dick, Dick Meister thought we should expand things. And I thought our programs are the easiest ones to move and so to me expanding into suburban campuses was more a way of helping the university realize their investment in suburban campuses. Rather than having any strong interest on my part. Doherty: Um. Can you talk about the development of Course Online what that came out of? [17:36] Epp: Yes. Um. So we had these professional programs. Programs for people who were already in the field and wanted to update their skills. So the problem was that they couldn t always come to class. So ah I thought well why not tape all the classes. By tape I mean audio tape. Well it turned out that there were several problems. For one thing you had to change the tape. While we had breaks so that sort of worked. The other is that ah people had to wear a microphone. So, that didn t ah work so well. Um. But, videotape ah records for a longer period of time than audiotape. So it was simpler to set up a camera with fixed focus and ah and then we had the problem that people forgot to turn on or turn off the microphone. Of course if they forgot to turn on the microphone and then there would be no audio for people to listen to the lecture and we had some embarrassing moments when they forgot to turn it off because some of them indulged in personal conversation sometime of somewhat scandalous nature which then was broadly distributed. So, okay so the conclusion was we cannot trust faculty to do something as simple as turning something on and off. That was the origin of Course Online. So we developed a system that would capture not only video, but other things what people would write on the board because we use a lot of unlike some subjects like English where they hardly ever write anything on the board. In in our field we write a lot of things on the board and so we captured that together with video and sound. But, the important thing was to make it so totally automatic so that the faculty would have to nothing but go into 5

7 the class and start talking and not be aware of anything else. That eventually led to situations where in fact classes were recorded and the faculty member didn t even know. And they only found out when a student said well, but you said last week. And the teacher said no, I said no such thing and they said yes you did. And they said, no I didn t. Well we can prove it to you here you re on Course Online. And of course that was record. It was by accident that they were Course Online. And so that was the origin it came within the Institute and the idea was to try to find a solution that involved no conscious activity on the part of the faculty except to do what they are good at doing which is to teach and lecture. So that was the origin. Doherty: Excellent. And now are they aware when they are being recorded? [21:06] Epp: No, they request to be or not. Doherty: Ok. Um in looking through the archives there s a very good and detailed history of the creation of Computer Science. As well as some of the extra programs that were going on in the early 80s and I found one particular memo of interest that you had written to Pat Ewers for a program you were doing for Juarez High School. And it stuck out because it had a detailed account of kind of events of the day that didn t really have anything to do with introducing robotics to this high school student group and their parents. Um, it talked about um Bob Fisher avoiding his mother-in-law and David Miller stapling his pants together with a stapler. Do you recall this event? [21:48] Epp: Not so explicitly. No, but it was a source of some amusement to you. Doherty: It was. It was. [21:56] Epp: Well as you. I, I. First of all you will find very few memos. I think I used to write one or two a year. It s not my style. I prefer doing things. Well no, I just, not my style. Ah. So when I did write them I didn t hesitate to spice them up. [laughter] Doherty: Um. It seems from some of those um that ah you as well as David Miller and some of the other faculty you were able to get faculty to give extra time, give their weekends up to do some of these programs and do some of these extra things. How were you able to convince um your colleagues to give so much of their time to these programs? [22:46] Epp: It was never an issue. Never. Doherty: No. [22:55] Epp: So later on when ah well because we had a certain esprit d accord. And ah later on when I got into higher levels faculty would complain that ah my God they had to do one new course next year and what a terrible thing it is. Some of us and this is the heroic early days ah would prepare three or four new courses which we d never taught before and we didn t 6

8 think twice of it. So, it was just this kind of general general spirit. And nobody had to do. And some people actually didn t do very much and some people did a lot. And I don t think there was anybody forcing it. They just understood we were building something and it was a good thing to do. Doherty: Um, in the most recent phase of your career your transition into purely administrative role and really didn t have as much contact with students on a day to day basis. But, would you talk a little bit about um your teaching career at DePaul when you really were in the classroom full-time? [24:12] Epp: Well at one time I could have never never imagined not teaching. Ah, I always enjoyed teaching. I didn t hesitate to be funny and all of that. Students said that I had a very dry sense of humor whatever that may mean. I think it means that sometimes they realized I had told a joke several minutes after I told it. Um. And I loved making complicated things simple. I enjoyed that very much. And so I always got very high evaluations. However, I was teaching primarily graduate courses because that s where we didn t have many experts and so we needed people who could learn things quickly and teach them. Um. And then I started primarily teaching in the Institute. And that was really great because the people came here because they wanted to learn. I mean they were paying their own money often and they wanted to learn something that would advance their profession which is a different context then most students particularly undergraduates find themselves in. It s just another course they have to take in order to get a degree. Ah. So, I once taught an undergraduate course that went so so. Ah, I was a little shocked and then much later when we started the cinema program. I love cinema and I also like technology and physics and those kind of things. So I designed a course that would explain the underlying technology and physics and optics and so of cinema. That sounds grim, but it wasn t. There weren t any equations or any of that. It was understanding how things worked. And I really spent a lot of time preparing those classes with lots of demonstrations, moving pictures, sounds and things like that. And I co-taught that course with Paul Sisul who you ve seen. Ah. And so one day well. I noticed that the class was essentially dead. There were maybe two or three live people in twenty-one. I ve been told after that this is just the cultural, this is how students look. Ah, but I hadn t seen that in awhile. So after one class where less than half the people showed up and I really worked hard. Ah I. I, and I think this is one of the only times that I actually threw my power around, I went to Paul and I said I quit. You teach the rest of it. Now, it s not being unfair particularly to Paul. It s just I threw a bit of a temper tantrum here you know. And in fact a few weeks later when I saw some of the students in the class they said what happened you disappeared. And I said you disappeared you didn t want to come, I didn t want to come. So, that s the last undergraduate course that I taught. And it s true that at that time my administrative responsibilities had quite increased. So, what is my attitude towards teaching? As I said before. For example, at University of Illinois I used to teach every remedial math course. Math for people who really had trouble with it. And I loved those classes. In fact, I was the first math instructor at the University of Illinois who got the best teach award because I was compassionate. I understood, I didn t minimize them. 7

9 Ah. After all the kind of things we teach now, it used to be what professors taught a few hundred years ago at university, but we teach it now in high school. So, not everybody you know has a good experience with that. So It s not the low-level that I object to it s when there s really isn t much of an interest. So when I was in a position to distance myself from that I did. Doherty: Um. [29:29] Epp: I may have to face this again. Doherty: [laughter] [29:31] Epp: When I come back. Doherty: Will you be teaching? [29:35] Epp: Well, I m on two years leave. Doherty: Ok. [29:37] Epp: This is my first year and then I have one more year. I may or may not retire after that, I mean I have other projects going on so ah, I don t know yet. Ah. And I don t know where I d be best used. I m going to leave that to the dean and some of the other faculty to decide what I should do to help them. Doherty: Um. You had just mentioned um your interest in cinema. And um there was the major change from CTI to CDM and including the school for digital media. Um we spoke to Matt Irvine or I spoke to Matt Irvine and he told us about the process of developing that school and having you as an advocate in presenting this to the more kind of traditional math trained computer scientists in the department who weren t as keen on the inclusion of digital media. Um. Can you talk about the process in starting this school? [30:51] Epp: Yea. Well ah. Just by way of a little anecdote. There was a president named ojack Minogue. He had an interest in using computers as a way to facilitate education. Many people have tried to do that. It hasn t been as successful as one might have liked. And then by the by he said you know there s one person in the university who s even more entrepreneurial than you. I couldn t let that pass and he was talking about Matt. Matt was in the Department of Communications and he had set up a little lab, a little video lab for them. And so I talked to him and I then went to the dean and I bought half of Matt meaning I said let s split him. And then of course I took all of Matt. And so we developed a program. We actually developed in Hollywood in an expensive restaurant on Sunset Blvd. out of expensive um saki. [laughter] Yea. We literally developed a curriculum during dinner. We d come to a conference on digital cinema. The reason we called it digital cinema is we didn t have the money for film cameras and so we said let s call it 8

10 digital cinema. And of course what was a necessity at the time has turned out to be a virtue. Because now everybody shoots that way so we were lucky. I don t know if this answers your question. We just developed a degree program. You offer it and students will come. It s not really very complicated. Doherty: Um. Matt talked about um kind of tensions about the a lot of the new faculty that was hired for the digital media side traditionally have MFAs opposed to PhDs [33:10] Epp: Yes, this was something. And it was clear that that was going to happen. At least initially before we became too large. The understanding I always had with all the faculty was whatever somebody else does doesn t harm you. They let you do whatever you want, you let them do whatever they want. It s a noble principle. And I think ah once you reach about seventy or eighty people and some resources are involved then all of a sudden this idealism doesn t quite work. And no it s clear it s two different cultures. It made sense the way we did it. We couldn t just start a cinema program. Because remember we first developed the graphics then animation then cinema. So there was kind of a continuity and we you know a transition from one to the other. Then in fact we made it as part of our PR that we had this full spectrum of all aspects of um making moving pictures. So, that s the way we looked at it. Later on you know some people want to control things. Ah, ah. Certainly Matt likes to control things and he s he s quite a strong personality. And ah he knew how he wanted to do it and he was trying to introduce some alien culture and the other people I think may have had some difficulty with that. But, David Miller has done an excellent job in terms of splitting them up into two sub-schools and let s face it, what is the university other than a collection of different disciplines. The particular administrative structure is not in my opinion is not that relevant even though it sometimes becomes very important to faculty. Doherty: Um, a number of your colleagues including Matt have mentioned in interview situations when you re one of the interviewers and you re interviewing one of the candidates for a faculty or administrative position you have an innate quality to get a sense of a person really quickly and to read people and sometimes I think Matt said he s disagreed with you, but then down the road he realized you were exactly right. Those initial um feelings you ve got about meeting people. Can you kind of explain that processes? [35:57] Epp: Well. Ah. Doherty: It s kind of hard to put into words. Epp: It s nice to have these myths around. All you have to do is cover up your mistakes right? [laughter] Have I hired people that I wish I hadn t? Absolutely. Was I originally wrong about them? I think you can get a lot in the first few instances seconds. But, that doesn t mean you can predict how people will act in circumstances when their own interests become important and so on. Ah. So, my interviews are generally not very orthodox. I don t pay that much attention to c.v. I mean I read it because I have to know what kind of 9

11 background. But, people are very good at covering things up and c.v. and so on and that doesn t really tell anything about the innate nature. It that in some way or another they are kind people and then that they are smart. They need both. If they re kind they ll probably take good care of the students and if they re smart they ll probably take good care of the students. Doherty: Um. I heard from I guess Fr. H and Fr. Ed the process by which you became provost, but I was wondering if you d tell the story from your perspective? [37:45] Epp: Yes. Well, it s a case of revenge. [laughter] Fr. Holtschneider when he came on board he visited all of the various colleges and you know he came to CDM and visited them. And then his habit was at the end of the visit he d meet with the dean and offer his help. And so he asked what can he do for me? And I said father you can stay out of my way- this was to the new president. And I didn t say it impolitely. I know it sounds a little harsh. It certainly caught his attention. And ah because that s how we had thrived I mean. Ah. I think the reason I generally got along very well with the administration is because I did try to look at how administration looked at things and then what we needed and then try to figure out a way of making both things work. Because administrations having been on that side, they re not out to make life more difficult for people. I mean they re generally interested in making this a better institution. So, if they have a different point of view there s probably some sort of reason for it and so I ve never had difficulties. Generally the things I ve requested they ve given to me. But, only because it was always very clear to them that I was acting in their interest as well as as the interest of the students and and and my unit. So anyway ah. At various times while they were looking for provost, Father asked me why I m not applying. And I told Father that I didn t want to become provost because I didn t want to lose power. I was dean at that time. So that s strike two I think with Fr. Holtschneider. Then ah I could see how things were going with the previous ah previous provost. He was a very nice man, a very smart man just not used to the kind of. He comes from a distinguished university. The kind of place we are is sort of a street fighter you know. And that wasn t his thing. And so Fr. Ed and another person whose no longer here came over and said the search had stalled and would I do the job at least temporarily. I felt I didn t. I mean I knew the university almost better than anyone. Ah. In fact, I was asked by the person who was provost before me, the one who was fired, why aren t you applying for this job and I said because I didn t want it because it s not a good job because all the things that can t be solved lower down bubble up. And sooner or later I d spent my career here with everybody basically liking me and getting along with everybody and then I became provost and all of a sudden there were people who were not so nice. Doherty: Um. One of the first things I guess did in the provost s office was to completely restructure the financial side of Academic Affairs. [41:43] Epp: Absolutley. Doherty: And. Also um professionalize the staff. Really bring in people who [41:57] 10

12 Epp: That was the most important thing I did actually. The most important thing I did actually was to hire Alyssa Kupka. I don t know if you ve talked to her. Doherty: Mm hmm. [42:06] Epp: She s a secret weapon. She s. The situation was when I came in because there was a weak provost before and a shark of a financial vice president who was fired. That basically my predecessor had given away all resources. When I came in I said I would like to have a receptionist, but they said no basically because we don t have any money. Can I hire a student as a receptionist? No we don t have the money for that. I had not resources whatsoever and yet we have a half a billion dollar budget of which about seventy percent belongs to Academic Affairs, my part. And so this is ridiculous. So I hired her and we were kind of involved in a two year war with the financial side which thanks to her skill we won. And even if we hadn t fired we fought him down to a draw. So, ah. See the problem is the academic side consists of lots of little departments, lots of special rules and so on. And it had never really been run in a consistent way. Ah. Alyssa trained people. Usually what the kind of person they would have as the budget manager is a secretary who was also the budget manager even though she had no idea and had never worked with that kind of thing. And so Alyssa fixed up a lot of those kind of things and got me more resources- money. She was very good at because she knew the budget so well where there was a little money here, a little money there and she would put it together and ah so. I adore her. Doherty: Um. I guess one of the major initiatives that was happened, university initiatives that happened during your tenure as provost was the Vision 2012 Strategic Plan for the university. Can you talk a little bit about your role on the Steering Committee? [44:30] Epp: Well, I m not a fan of strategic plans. Doherty: [laughter] As your colleagues have mentioned. [44:45] Epp: [laughter] I guess you have to have them. Um for PR purposes so that people think you actually know what you re doing and where you re going. Um, particularly at this school I think that s very difficult things are very volatile and being an opportunist is fine. You obviously need some general principles. You need to know. Do you care about students/? Do you want to make sure that you continue to allow poor students can attend? There are some basic things that you have to decide. Um. But, for the rest ah I think that the most important in running institutions is to create an environment in which people can feel empowered to do the right thing and work on their own I mean. I really think that s the real secret. We ve, this university is becoming more traditional and so you know maybe strategic plans are more and more important. I haven t even read the current one. But, they also narrow people down so if something new comes up then well this is because the strategic plan. I ve just not had a good experience with it. I m not saying they shouldn t 11

13 have them, but it s hard for me to take them seriously. It was one of the more difficult things to do. I mean pretending to take it seriously- Doherty: -Pretending to take it seriously. Um in your career at DePaul you ve had a lot of administrative roles from being chair of a department, to dean of a college, to for awhile VP of Information Services and then eventually provost. Um, what qualities do you think a good administrator needs to have to fulfill his or her duties? [46:54] Epp: Let me first of all make it clear that I ve never considered myself a good administrator. I m, I like humorous things too much, paradoxes and all of that. To me the most critical thing is to have good people. To give them your trust and support and that s mainly to the extent that I ve been successful at some things and I have to admit without being immodest that I have been successful at a number of things. But, I know in each instance that I had some good people working with me and this is really not false modesty because I m not saying necessarily those good people would have done those things without me there. There is something called leadership. And to some extent leadership means that you go ahead and do things even when people are not so comfortable about it. Ah. The problem with all administration, particularly when you try to do big moves, I m not talking about writing a memo a week or that kind of thing, things like creating new colleges. You can t try it and say well if it doesn t work we ll do something else. You never know what would have happened if you would have done something else, you just don t know. So, ah, in that sense I think I have had certain ability to ignore difficulties and say we ll do it anyway. Don t worry we ll fix that small stuff which sometimes drives of course people who work for you crazy. But, that s not what the institution is about, it s not about making particular people comfortable. Doherty: Um. Your list of accomplishments and initiatives at DePaul seems kind of impossible for one person to have all these credits to your name. Um. Is there anything you re most proud of looking back at your career at DePaul so far of developments that are particularly credited towards your foresight and vision for the university? [49:33] Epp: I was just in Sicily and I was asked today by ah my, I go to something called Pilates, do you know that? Doherty: Mm hmm. [50:03] Epp: And ah it s me and a bunch of women [laughter], well my wife is there too. Ah and she said ask me. Ok what is your favorite part in Sicily? I thought about it, but I couldn t think of one thing. And so I said when people ask you that question it s because they want a limited answer. Don t bother telling us about all of it, just pick one thing you know that I can write up in the article or whatever. And ah. Supporting Kalsbeek who developed this DePaul Central so that students can go to one place to get all their problems solved instead of running all over. That was very important. Um. The Computer Career Program gave a lot of people chances. I don t know, I enjoyed it all. [laughter] 12

14 Doherty: Excellent. Um. [??] Epp: Remember I do think I m an opportunist and when there s an opportunity you do it. Doherty: Mm hmm. [??] Brian Cicirello: I m getting a sound, a sound like a drop of water or something? Doherty: Is it your cell phone? [??] Cicirello: Could you power it down or turn it down? Epp: I have no idea how to turn this thing off. [laughter] You don t understand, oh I ll turn it off okay ah because I don t need it. But, I ve been thinking of you [Brian] and when you would get around to mentioning it, but I wasn t going to say anything. Cicirello: I wasn t sure if it was your coffee or not because I can t see, so I couldn t see. Epp: I know it was amusing. Doherty: It sounded like a fishing noise. Ok, um. I was going to give you a chance for rebuttal. A number of your colleagues have mentioned that um you have this great foresight and this vision and when you get an idea you just want to go with it, you want to see the results right away and you don t necessarily want to deal with the process or go through a process. Um. How would you respond[52:46] Epp: Absolutely correct. Doherty: No need to go through the process if you know it can be done and? [53:01] Epp: Well. Doherty: I guess the context. [53:09] Epp: Yes, what is the context. Doherty: I guess the context that they were presenting was when a few people were critical of some of the projects they had to work on with you and they would be frustrated that um you were always it seemed like three or four pages ahead of them and you d already gotten to the end conclusion, but it was hard for them to get there with you. [53:18] Epp: Well, I cannot recall people coming to complain to me. I guess people are a little scared of 13

15 me sometimes or something. I don t know why. I think I ve been kind and supportive of just about everybody. Um. I can see where they come from, but to tell the truth I don have a lot of sympathy or empathy with that. Doherty: They generally followed up, even when someone was critical they followed up with they still had the utmost respect for you and in the end they would be frustrated because they knew you were right and they you were leading them down the right path even if it took them longer to see it that way. [54:08] Epp: I understand. I mean I think the new provost will give them process to the nth degree so I hope they will enjoy it. Doherty: Um. [laughter] It s. Epp: If they enjoy meetings. [laughter] Doherty: Um. It s rare within academia to spend the vast majority of your career at one institution. Um, what s kept you at DePaul all these years? [54:45] Epp: Well it s as simple as one thing led to another. I mean I always had some interesting problems, something to grow something. Something, so I suppose. The other thing is in some sense this was a small pond and I was a bigger fish kind of thing. I, at the University of Illinois I once tried to change one little part in a calculus course and after three years they finally did it. Here because we had almost not bureaucracy, it s not quite true anymore. But, ah. Things could move quickly and there wasn t any process, so. I would say to those people that if they brought up things I would consider them and I don t like making mistakes frankly and I ve learned a lot from other people, but I do move ahead. I mean when you have a certain intuition and you have the power to- I mean that s why you have people in charge of things. I know that Fr. Richardson for example. Have you ever met him? Doherty: Mmm mm. Epp: You ve heard of him? Doherty: Yes. Epp: Interesting guy. He bought the corner building used to be Goldblatt s, it s now DePaul Center. He paid theoretically one dollar, but it took $100 million to refurbish it and I know everybody thought he was crazy including me. I thought it was a bad business decision. I was wrong. It worked out alright. Who knows if we d used that money elsewhere we could have done even better, but you see you can t do that as if somebody has to make the decision push it. I d say everybody would agree that DePaul Center is something that adds real class to our downtown presence. So, I think that s the price of leadership. You cannot always bring everybody along. 14

16 Doherty: What is your um post-provost career at DePaul look like? [57:15] Epp: Well I m in the process of working that out. I have some time to do it. There s a project I m interested in that has to do with measuring the world and some expeditions that took place in the 17 th, 18 th century, and 19 th century. It s both science, history and politics. So, I m reading a lot about it and I have some ideas of maybe even making a movie, a documentary or writing something about it. I don t know yet. But, then again I may say I ve done enough I m just having fun. Doherty: Excellent. Do you have any final reflections you d like to share about your time at DePaul? [57:28] Epp: Is this it. I will never talk to you again. Doherty: Unless you want to. [57:37] Epp: No, no I just want to understand the process. Doherty: Yea. [57:39] Epp: This is it. In one hour I recapitulate forty years of my life. Doherty: I guess so. [57:52] Epp: Well one of my favorite sayings is that when God discovered he couldn t change the past he invented historians maybe that includes oral historians as well. Doherty: [laughter] Maybe. [58:06] Epp: I enjoyed very much. If you have any further questions. You said you talked to colleagues and friends of mine. There are some people who are not so friendly, you should talk to them too. Doherty: Excellent. Well thank you so much for sitting for an interview. [58:??] Epp: Thank you. 15