Q: Well, let's talk about your philosophy.

Well, I did my Master's work back under Carl Rogers, so to speak. That is a time in the sixties, and that it's also a philosophy that has to do with the people, the times -- the existential movement that is embodied in almost everything I do. So, I say to people regularly that if we do not take care of the worth and dignity of every individual, we will lose any war that we go to. That's a tenant as a part of me. I come from a family, I think, that probably put that in place, but this gave me the words.

Another one of my tenants has to do with whatever I do -- Grace Jones -- whatever I do, I have an inherent responsibility to see of the access of other persons who need it. I've used that as a means of saying that I have responsibilities to everyone who is in my race, who is of my gender. I use those because those are the persons that often don't have that access. A particular fragile group, I believe, in the American society is the African-American male. The African-American male has been pulled out of the fabric in such a way and if they are able to find themselves, they will need to have that reinforced with regularity in order to build the strength that is missing presently. That is not about the male, that is about the society.

So, those are some basic pieces in me. I like leading, because I lead through facilitating others. I don't give edicts; I look to empower. I'm one of those Wheaton people who says, when you give power away, you get more. Those are kind of all the basic pieces that I use as part of my life.

Q: Did you bring family with you to Utah?

Well, no I don't have family with me. I have two children who are grown, and my daughter married this summer. That is of the biological family. The family of origin is spread all over the country and we are still important to each, my brothers and my sisters. The extended family, and that's the family that I have had the fortune to have in every community that I've lived in, so that that extended family is extensive, from sea to shining sea and they are in very much support of me.

I've come here alone, and as the Tribune said when I got here, "She has no family, she has no emotional ties and she's all alone." Well, people wrote me letters saying "Can I help you?" I have a dog. I'm a very independent vessel, that's not my issue. When the article was written, I thought they should have put in their that she's homeless, because the house hadn't been prepared for me yet to move in, so I was living in a hotel. I don't have those immediate people around me, but as with any other community, I expect to build that extended family here and I would say that it is starting to take some shape and form. My family is as near as the phone call.

Q: Did you have any impressions prior to coming to the College of Eastern Utah?

My colleagues within the college system look at opportunity in terms of what it will offer for either enhancing professional skills etc. What can be woven in that enhancement is whether one would be allowed to do the job they know they can do. That's what I talked over with some of the people I would call my mentors about coming here. I didn't have one who said, "That doesn't make sense...You shouldn't do that." Of all those who have been my mentors and supporters and advocates, they have all stayed with me through the process to make sure it was all right. It is a really good and interesting feeling to come to a new place

The reason we are having this discussion, I have a feeling, is because there are so few blacks here that to come to a place with so few blacks -- to be able to come with a support system that says "It's alright to go" and to come to a growing support system that says "It's alright to be." So, there are those components.

Your question has a political implication in it, and that is the politics of race would lead one to say, "You look at Utah and it's demographics, and it doesn't work." But that's the question I asked the group I met before I ever did the final interview, and long before I accepted the offer that was made. That group here said, "We know there is race and it matters. But what we are confronted with more often is not on race but is about ignorance and people willing to learn." That's a whole different ball game, especially in the scheme in of politics. I have never been in a group of people of color who would talk that way in any other place that I have lived. That, for me, was the big revelation of a different way of addressing issues and I took that to the bank.

Q: Because this will be seen on public television (by and large for a predominately white audience -- and we'll be taking it to schools for teachers and students of all backgrounds), what kinds of things would you say to put the message across about African-Americans in Utah?

One of my phrases, I will use it here, is when you set the table of education, you set it to include all perspectives. The more homogeneous the group, the more important that you include the perspectives of table. Those perspectives must include people of all color, people of different gender, of different lifestyles, of different other cultural orientations. If we do that, that will be the opening the premiere to real education that serves the global community -- but first it serves ourselves. The component I'm talking about bringing this perspective to table is also being heard at that table. We can all be here, but if you don't get heard, your being here is insignificant. So, we got to look at styles. I talk a lot in education about learning styles.

I know in my own family that one child learned differently from the other. The way they turned out to be the brilliant human beings they are, and I really say that as a proud mother, is because you look at their styles and you incorporate that in the learning process. I mention that particularly because I think that is one the areas that we should feel challenged in working with our Native American Indians, that we continue to do the teaching and learning, but I'm not sure we pay good attention to learning styles. Once you pay attention to learning styles you usually have major breakthroughs in achievement for that group of people. That is something that I preach back in the burghers of Massachusetts and the hills of New York and certainly I carry it here.

I carry it here because I have that very direct responsibility to a population that is an intrical part of our college in San Juan County. They make up 50 percent, the Native Americans -- primarily Navajos -- 50 percent of that student population. And they have to succeed and I'm glad to say that they are succeeding. Fifty percent of the graduating class this past year were Native American students. That needs to be the message that we put into the Elementary schools carrying it into the Junior High and High School, but it has to come to the college. I say it here often in terms of how we look at our search process.

Part of the perspective that you get the college to recognize is to make sure it's represented in your employee group, because they are at that table too. If you have those at the table you have the chance of incorporating that into your learning and living environment. Those are the kinds of things I talk about most. Finally, there have been some historic events relevant to race relations in this community.

Yes, I think that my reading local history is something I do when I come in. So, I was able to read of a time when in this community a black man was lynched. The people who know about that are probably in their eighties now, and some people have been very direct about that being out there, and their needing to keep it alive for themselves. At the same time, it's almost if that should never happen again. There are some issues around a basketball team that's very hard for people to share and that's in recent years and that was about race. I think there are some issues that come into play where people want to be silent. I'm not going to try and determine why they need to be silent, I think that rests with the individual.

I think that knowing that those issues have been addressed or that people have confronted as long ago as 1939, or 1935 on the lynching, and as recent as of five years ago. That there is something there that may have to do very directly with race. The silence on it, or the overt acknowledgment, I need to leave with the people who know about it and need to say it. I also need to leave the permission that it is all right to talk about those things as well as many other things that you are not proud of that have happened in your community. Sometimes if you don't talk about it, it creates that boil that bursts. Other times, you move onto a new plain when you do talk about it. I know about those two incidents.

What I'm saying about a community? I don't change where I started, and that is that they are pretty authentic and pretty direct about who they are and the pride they have and my sense of welcome, but I will go back to the earlier statement that Cornell West book says, "Clearly, race matters."

Q: What issues of race need to be addressed right now?

I believe in whatever work I'm doing, I have a responsibility to speak in behalf of what I think are serious issues in the American society. I think the most serious issue in the American society is the absence of and placed in jeopardy, the African-American male. I do not believe the American fabric is inclusive of the African-American male in that male's wholeness. So, I speak to that on several occasions.

Someone asked me about my passion and that's what I said. I have the passion to tell the story of the African-American male, and that can be from one individual. I tend to talk about an individual at a time, but that's the only way we are going to begin the process of America taking a real look at what has happened in the situation of whether it's fear or denial, fear barriers, or what have you. I think that we've got to do that and telling the story is the first step in that process.

Q: Anything you might want to add?