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AN INTERVIEW WITH KEN STONER
Interviewer: Brower Burchill
The Oral History Project
of the Endacott Society
The University of Kansas
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KEN STONER
EDUCATION
1969 B.S. Kansas State University
Education; Physical Science
1971 M.S. Iowa State University
Student Personnel
1979 Ed.D. University of Tennessee
Educational Administration and Supervision
SERVICE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Director of Student Housing, Student Affairs
1985 - 2006
RETIREMENT
Spring, 2006
TITLES/RANK
Director of Student Housing, Student Affairs
1985 – 2006
ADMINISTRATIVE/CHAIRMANSHIP POSITIONS
See Resume Provided
3
This is Brower Burchill. On behalf of the Endacott Society I am talking with Kenneth
Stoner. This is September 2 of 2006. Kenneth retired this past spring after twenty-one
years at the University of Kansas. I have known him for all of those years, and I am
looking forward to this chat. This is meant to be an informal, casual conversation, not a
formal interview, so let’s make it fun if possible.
Burchill: “Do you mind if I call you Ken? All right. I want to clarify: When you first
came to KU, and I believe it was 1985 and you were thirty-eight years old.”
Stoner: “It was 1985 and the math is easy. I am sixty today, so with twenty-one off that
would be… ”
Burchill: “Yeah, pretty doggone close. You were a youngster, that’s what this proves.”
Stoner: “Okay.”
Burchill: “You retired in 2006 after twenty-one years.”
Stoner: “Correct.”
Burchill: “And tell me about the title which you held while you were here.”
Stoner: “I was the Director of Student Housing that entire time. I came as the Director
of Student Housing and that’s what I retired from.”
Burchill: “And that’s in the Student Affairs sector of the university?”
Stoner: “That’s correct.”
Burchill: “Okay, now a little bit about your family background – you are married?”
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Stoner: “I am married, yes, that’s correct.”
Burchill: “Children?”
Stoner: “I have two. I have a daughter that is married and lives in Lewisville, a suburb
of Dallas, Texas with her husband. I have a son that’s married and lives with his wife in
Kansas City.”
Burchill: “Grandchildren?”
Stoner: “None. I have none at this time.”
Burchill: “You’re expecting, it sounds like. I don’t mean you’re expecting. [Laughter]
How did you meet your wife?”
Stoner: “Actually, I had taken my first job at Iowa State University and she was on the
staff there. So I kid her that she was assigned to me as my orientation guide, or whatever.
So I met her at Iowa State. When I did my Master’s, we were there on the same staff and
in the Master’s Program together.”
Burchill: “Okay. We’re going to get into that part of your background in more detail
later. Now, let’s go back earlier in your life. When and where were you born?”
Stoner: “I was born August 8 of 1946. I was born in… actually the family, my folks
lived in Hill City at that time, but the hospital was in Hays, so I was born out at the
hospital in Hays, Kansas. I guess we lived in Hill City until about, maybe when I was
three, and my brother would have been four, and then my folks moved to Garden City.
So that’s really home. We were raised in Garden City, and that’s where I went to all my,
you know, grade school, junior high and high school, and graduated from there, out of
Garden City.”
5
Burchill: “Do you know the origin of the name ‘Stoner’, where – what sort of an
ancestor’s… ”
Stoner: “It’s probably… it’s Mennonite mostly; it’s German immigrants who came to the
United States and at that time were Steiners, and became anglicized into Stoners. The
family is – I was surprised, I had done some geneology work – here in Lawrence there’s
about three Stoners in the phone book, but if you go back to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
they are like ‘Smiths’. There’s three or four pages of ‘Stoners’, ‘Steiners’ in the phone
books out there. So after the Civil War I think they felt like that was a little too much
violence there in Pennsylvania, and so a lot of them migrated out here to the settlements
in Nebraska and Kansas and some of the western communities. So my family were
originally of that stock or that nature of family.”
Burchill: “Okay. Tell me your parents’ names and what they did to support the family.”
Stoner: “My dad’s name is James Roger, and he’s a… both of my parents are blue collar.
My dad worked in a Chevrolet / Oldsmobile maintenance (Chevrolet / Oldsmobile /
Cadillac) garage. He was a mechanic / parts person there. My mother was a stay at home
mom from the time the kids were home, and then later she clerked in the courthouse there
in Garden City. Her name is Lorna May, Lorna May Stoner. She was a Lewis, Lorna
May Lewis, and then Dad was Stoner, and so that’s… both farm families, they both kept
farms. Mom was from around Brewster, which is close to Colby, and my dad was from
close to Goodland and around into that area, where their homes were.”
Burchill: “Way out west. Did you have a very fine education? Did they propel you into
that by the way they set an example in the home or… I gather, and maybe I am wrong,
that they did not have a college education…”
Stoner: “No, neither one had a college education. My mom had gone to Hays for a year,
I think, or maybe two, but neither have college degrees. They believed in education, and
they always encouraged us to learn as much as we could. I think part of the message that
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we got when I was home is that their life was good and it was acceptable, but if we did
want somewhat of a higher standard of living then we would have to have an education.
So I guess that kind of stuck.”
Burchill: “Did your family do things together, eat together, you know what I mean?”
Stoner: “Yeah, yeah, we did. We did a number of things together. Of course the
vacations weren’t terrifically exciting by today’s standards, but I remember Dad taking us
up to Ogallala Reservoir. We would go fishing out there in Nebraska. We went to
Carlsbad one year. We would take vacations together. Sunday was always family time.
I forget the sequence of it, but I remember ‘Bonanza’ was in there, and the girls watched
something and then the boys. We all agreed on what would be watched, and the same
way on Saturday. Then we did a lot of things together. My brother and I, being just a
year apart, he is probably the most…”
Burchill: “Is that Roger?”
Stoner: “Roger, yeah.”
Burchill: “We’ll talk about him later.”
Stoner: “So we did a lot, we played on the same… for the convenience of travel and
getting places, and things we needed to do, we were always on the same ball teams, the
same bands, the same stuff, so that we did a lot of things together.”
Burchill: “Was he your only brother?”
Stoner: “Yes. I had him, Roger was my brother. Then I had a sister Lorene, and then
another sister Peggy. So there were four of us.”
Burchill: “Did you live in town or on a farm?”
7
Stoner: “We lived in town, we lived in town.”
Burchill: “Okay. Let’s talk about your public school experiences. You mentioned
playing in the band or something a minute ago. Did you play an instrument?”
Stoner: “Yeah. I played the trombone. My brother played the trumpet. Mom was quite
musical and played the piano and stuff, and so all the kids played something. Peggy, my
one sister, was the probably the most talented of all. She could play anything that had a
string or a mouthpiece or a reed on it, so she was really, really good. But, at any rate…
and Roger came here on a music scholarship, and so it was a… that piece of it was a
musical family of sorts.”
Burchill: “What then what about you as far as hobbies, activities in school… what sort of
things outside of the regular curriculum occupied your time?”
Stoner: “Well, of course we had the bands, and then there was some advanced bands,
and some quintet types of things that my brother and I played in because we were about
the same… we were just a year apart… and then my next sister was three years, and then
there was another four years to my other one, and so it was really… my brother and I
tended to do a lot of things together. Then outside of the classroom there was the sports.
We played the sports. We were both on a Kiwanis baseball team, and then we played in
the bands, and we played football, and we were in track – just the things you would do in
high school. I collected bugs, and at one time I thought I might be an entomologist.”
Burchill: “Now that’s very interesting, speaking to a biologist.”
Stoner: “I always raised some parsley and collected the black swallowtails or the
different types of butterflies. You can usually catch them if you plant what they come to,
and so I learned to do that. I enjoyed that, that was an outside…”
Burchill: “Were you in plays? Did you do any acting?”
8
Stoner: “Oh, yeah, yeah, well yeah, the high school plays. We did all the high school
plays.”
Burchill: “What about singing? Were you in musicals?
Stoner: “Not as much on the musical side of it. We sang in the church choirs and stuff,
but not with the school stuff, but we could… again, the family could sing.” [Laughter]
Burchill: “Now, we’ll find out later you were active in Methodist Church activities.
Were you Mennonites or Methodists?”
Stoner: “Methodists. Well, we came into the Methodist Church. I don’t know where…
it was probably about back with my grandfather when they, I think, joined the regular
churches, or anglicized, or were no longer a part of the Mennonite communities. They
had lost some strength – had moved out here and had lost some of their numbers and
became smaller. Many became regular farmers and moved to town and took other jobs
and stuff. So, no, the church that we belonged to there in Garden City was always the
First Methodist out there.”
Burchill: “Do you see any of your experiences back in that part of your life which
influenced the profession that you accepted for yourself, with Student Housing, if you
will?”
Stoner: “Well, I think they probably all did. You know, we always as a family, and with
the friends, and the other things that we did – and so, it was always kind of a ‘people’
thing. I think we enjoyed those interactions and getting together, whether it was the
family things or the church things or the school things, and that always had value, those
community things. A lot of what I do at the universities has been the same sort of things,
building community and strengthening some of those relationships.”
9
Burchill: “That makes sense. Were you influenced by any of your teachers in particular?
Could you name them?”
Stoner: “Oh, in high school I was always fond of Coach Dickerson. He also taught
biology, so he was a favorite of mine. Miss Wadsack in the third grade, I remember her,
that she always seemed to be what I thought was an excellent teacher and a good role
model. In high school a guy named Mr. Vaughn, who had lost his arm in Korea, came
back and he was a high school teacher. I always admired him and thought that he
was a … Actually, I didn’t have any problem with the teachers. I pretty much liked them
all. I enjoyed the subjects and I enjoyed going to school. I mean, it wasn’t an ordeal for
me. I just enjoyed that environment.”
Burchill: “Okay. Now we’re going to jump ahead to your professional college career. I
know a little bit about this, but I’ll get you started. You took your B.S. degree from
Kansas State University in, I think, 1969.”
Stoner: “That’s correct.”
Burchill: “Why did you do that? Because you were from western Kansas and K-State’s
where people went?”
Stoner: “No, uh…[laughter] this was the ‘60s and I think some of those decisions that
were made, there’s probably no good reason why they were made, but, at the time, my
brother had come here the year before on a music scholarship to KU. And so then when I
graduated I was offered a music scholarship to come here to KU. It had always been my
brother and I, which was great, I mean, same ball team, same… I thought, ‘You know, if
I take that music scholarship, I’ll go to KU and I’ll be a music major and we’ll probably
get in the same hall together and we’ll live together’, which would all have been fine and
stuff, but I just thought at that time it just was time to… you know, America is always
good about figuring yourself out or finding yourself or whatever it is… so it was time to
maybe find myself, or whatever the correct terminology was.”
10
Burchill: “That rings bells.”
Stoner: “So I just go to K-State, not on a scholarship, and just see what interests me, and
take the subjects I wanted to take, and see what happened. And so I just went to K-State
without really much of a plan at all, as far as career aspirations.”
Burchill: “Yeah. You majored in Education and Physical…”
Stoner: “Physical Science, yeah, Physics and Chemistry. So, about my junior year I
decided I wasn’t going to do that. I had started to grow weary of the labs and stuff and
the tediousness of it all. I thought, ‘Well, maybe this isn’t…’, because the types of jobs
that I was beginning to look at was like Bristol Meyers or Bayer or some of the
pharmaceutical companies for lab work or research work. By then I just knew I wasn’t
going to be… I just wasn’t happy doing that, or unfulfilled, or whatever you want to call
it.”
Burchill: “I know exactly. I changed my major after my first year. Gosh, I hated that
first year. [Laughter] Did you live in a dorm?”
Stoner: “Yeah, the whole time. I went to K-State and I checked into Marlatt Hall. It was
new that year, so we were the first occupants of it. I got myself elected to the Presidency
of the fourth floor that year of the hall, and then the next year I was President of the hall.
Then we moved over to West Hall as an R.A. Then we opened Haymaker. This was in
the building boom. Then they picked some R.A.s from around campus, and we went
over and I opened Haymaker as the Assistant Hall Director over there when it was new.
So I was kind of getting the housing stuff on the side anyway, as a kind of a… well,
initially as a way to pay my way through college, or to help out, because of the room and
board, but I liked it. So it was just kind of an interesting side at the time. I wasn’t
considering it, I didn’t even realize it would be a career.” [Laughter]
11
Burchill: “But there was definitely an influence there. Did you receive honors of any
kind while you were at K-State?”
Stoner: “Yes, I was in Blue Key. I think that was probably the most significant thing
that I felt like came my way, as far as the senior year graduating with Blue Key honors,
and being in Blue Key my senior year. So that was terrific, and other than that, just the
routine stuff with being active. I was on the Student Senate too, and then active in the
residence halls and that sort of thing. Actually, my junior year I was elected as President
of what they call the NACURH – the National Association of College and University
Residence Halls. That’s probably what changed my career more than anything else. I
spoke that year at one of the national conferences. They invited me because I was
President, not because whether they knew I had anything to say, but at any rate,
apparently there were some people there from Iowa State. These were kind of rough
times in the ‘60s and stuff, and I think it was sort of like, ‘Well, here’s a voice of reason
that might be out there with the students. Maybe we could bridge the gap by hiring some
people like that’. So at any rate, they called me and asked if I would come interview at
Iowa State for a job up there. So that was how I kind of…”
Burchill: “What was the job?”
Stoner: “It was called Program Advisor. I was working at a residence hall. [Laughter]
I’m dating myself here, Brower, but in those days we had the men on one side of campus
and the women on the other side.”
Burchill: “Oh, I remember it well.”
Stoner: “And so, the issue of the day was co-ed housing. So one of the tasks that was
assigned to me, we were going to move half the women to one side of campus and the
other half of the men over, and kind of swap around the halls, and go to having men and
women eating in the same dining halls, and men and women in the same areas, and stuff
like that, so that was…”
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Burchill: “Shades of integration.”
Stoner: “Yeah, yeah. So that’s what my task was.”
Burchill: “And then you took a Master’s degree there.”
Stoner: “I did, I did. Let me back up and say one thing about K-State. At K-State there
was a woman there named Mabel Strong, and she was a Hall Director. She had
encouraged me, and she was really quite a woman, and I appreciated her. Then there was
Chet Peters, who was Dean of Men at the time, and became later Vice President of
Student Affairs there. He kind of gave me my… he also kind of gave me a notion… that
hall we had opened that year, Marlatt Hall, there were some initial problems. It was new,
and I mean, we were building very fast, or the university was, and I was an officer, so we
had kind of gone over there, and this was the administration’s fault, of course, that all
these things aren’t just right, so we…
Burchill: “Really.” [Laughter]
Stoner: “…as students are wont to do sometimes. [Laughter] So, we had kind of this
thing with him. So I was supposed to follow up with him, and I went back a second time
with something else, I went back and he said, ‘Ken, all’s you’re doin’ is bringin’ me
problems. I have no time for this. Unless you have something you want to suggest or put
on the table as an alternative, then get out of here. I don’t have time for you, I don’t have
time for this’, which was a really… I mean… it was sort of a… and so I did, I left. And
then I came back about a couple of weeks later and told him I had some things that I had
met with the hall about and would like to suggest, and maybe it might help be solutions to
some of those problems. He said, ‘Well, come on in’. We sat in there and we had a nice
talk and did some different things, and I thought… you know, that was sort of my…
there’s ways to go about things, you know. So I think those two at K-State kind of,
although I wasn’t taking classes or anything formally and was in a different major and
everything, that got me to thinking about the possibility of working at a university. Okay.
Then I go to Iowa State. Now I am at Iowa State where I did my Master’s.”
13
Burchill: “What did you do for your… did you have a thesis Master’s?”
Stoner: “No, it wasn’t. I did a non-thesis option there. It was in Student Personnel
Services.”
Burchill: “Is that what your degree was called, Master’s in Personnel?”
Stoner: “I think it was under the Counseling Program at the time, under the Counseling
section, so it’s probably (unless you have it there on the materials)…”
Burchill: “My notes say Master’s in Student Personnel, but…”
Stoner: “Yeah, that’s probably…”
Burchill: “But you have to remember this is from newspaper articles and stuff like that.”
Stoner: “Yeah, all right.”
Burchill: “Is that enough Master’s about Iowa State? Anything else happen during those
two years there that we ought to bring up?”
Stoner: “Well, I should mention at K-State at that time, the land grant schools all had the
required two years basic ROTC, so I had taken that and had the basics out of the way.
My brother and I both had a fairly low draft number, so to do my Master’s I signed into
the advanced program to be commissioned. So I did that as well while I was at Iowa
State, and then did my basic training and other things as a part of the ROTC, and then I
was commissioned at Iowa State. So I had a service obligation at the end of my Iowa
State time, and so after that two years that’s why I originally left.”
Burchill: “My record shows that you were in the military for three months?”
14
Stoner: “Well, it was. I went in right after Iowa State, and I was there in the Officer
Training Program at Fort Benjamin Harrison. Somewhere part way through the program,
one of the administrators or officers came in and said something to the effect like,
‘Gentlemen, the decision has been made that we are going to wind down the war, so
those of you that are in the pipeline here’s your choices: You can keep your two years
and help us wind it down in your assignment to Vietnam, or you can take four years
active with a guarantee of no assignment to Vietnam, to go to Germany or wherever, one
of the other assignments, or you can take eight years Reserve and wrap it up at the end of
the program. So I took the eight year Reserve option. Then I came out after three
months in October looking for a job, because I had signed in thinking that I would be
going [to Vietnam] at the end of the three months. That’s why if I had known in advance
I probably wouldn’t have quit the job [at Iowa State]. It’s just one of those things. I
wouldn’t have left the job at Iowa State, I would have stayed there. I wouldn’t have
made those decisions, but it all worked out.”
Burchill: “And then where did you go?”
Stoner: “South Florida. The Director of Housing down there, Ray King was his name, I
really appreciated him. He held the job open for me because I wasn’t getting out until
October. Most schools like to just start you on cycle, but he held the job for me, and so I
went to the University of South Florida then in October when I got out.”
Burchill: “As an instructor?”
Stoner: “Well, they called it Resident Instructor. You were three-quarter time housing
and one-quarter time faculty. At that time in Florida, all the students were in a two year
college of basic studies, so they took all their basic classes (Psych., Soc., English), and
then they declared majors and moved into their degree programs. And so they needed
lots of instructors at a certain level, so I would teach two sections of Psych. or two
sections of Soc., or something like that each semester. And then do the housing stuff – it
was a kind of a Hall Director type of thing for the other three-quarter time.”
15
Burchill: “And then to the University of Tennessee?”
Stoner: “Yes, from there I left and went to the University of Tennessee. One of the
attractions there, they still had a tuition waiver for faculty/staff, and I thought I’d go there
and whack out my doctorate in three years and then be off to the… Well, we went there
and the three years became five to get the degree. Then there was a house and two kids,
and the next thing we know we were… the people… the kids they say they’re from
Tennessee, you know. The place kind of grew on us and we were there twelve years.”
Burchill: “But you had a title there which led you to come to KU?”
Stoner: “Yes, I started as the Assistant Director of Residence Halls there, and then I
became the Associate Director of Residence Halls there. I had applied for the job at KU
when Mr. Wilson retired, and then came back closer to home.”
Burchill: “And your doctorate was in Educational Administration and Supervision?”
Stoner: “Correct.”
Burchill: “Did you have a dissertation?”
Stoner: “Yes. Yes, I did.”
Burchill: “I’d like to talk to you about that, but did the topic of your dissertation
influence all the research? You’ve done lots of research that we’ll get into, lots of
publications. Did those spring from your dissertation?”
Stoner: “A couple of them did. A few of them did not. Not a whole lot of them, but a
few of them did. I enjoy writing and the research isn’t a huge issue with me. It’s… like I
say, some people they just dread it, but I don’t find it a burden or anything.”
16
Burchill: “Is it that you’re a good observer?”
Stoner: “I think partially, that and good timing too. I think sometimes the issue of the
year and the issue of the day – professionally, if you speak on that topic then it’s more
inclined to be published. More recently, this is the nice thing – if they ask you to write
the article they… you know they are going to publish it. [Laughter] So the last five or ten
years, most of what I have written is somebody has asked if I would generate an article or
write something up from a point of view or perspective, or something like that, and so
that makes it very nice.”
Burchill: “Well, my notes show that you have a whole lot of publications – forty-six at
the time that your resume was written. I’m not sure how recent that was, but that’s
remarkable. You’re to be applauded, because you were working all this time.”
Stoner: “Thank you.”
Burchill: “How did you happen to come to KU? I know you applied, but did you have
some prior affiliation or interest in KU when you applied?”
Stoner: “No. Well, other than I’ve always loved this place. I came here for Boy’s State.
I’ve always thought it was a beautiful campus. I probably would have come here, with
the exception of I decided it was time to kind of separate from my brother a little bit and
see what was going on. So, I mean, I’ve always loved the campus. We always… I
shouldn’t tell this, but I would get in basketball games. I would drive over from K-State
and I’d pick up a trombone with my brother, and we would walk over from Murphy, and
I would play in the pep band. So I watched some of the basketball games. [Laughter]
Burchill: “You shouldn’t tell that.” [Laughter]
Stoner: “That’s how I would come in to the basketball games. And he would come to
17
K-State sometimes. So we still stayed in touch. I’ve always loved the place. I’ve always
thought it was a beautiful campus.”
Burchill: “Was Roger here?”
Stoner: “Uh-huh. Yeah.”
Burchill: “Oh, okay. He was already on the faculty when you… “
Stoner: “Yeah, he was here when I came, yeah. So he was here when I came back, and
he had graduated from here and had left and did his Master’s at Emporia State while he
was teaching. He was good enough – he was very good in fact – that he did his four
years military service as first trumpet in the United States Marine Band, is where he did
his four years military service.”
Burchill: “Wow. Wow.”
Stoner: “Yeah. So it made me re-think as I was graduating, whether maybe I should
have taken the music scholarship.” [Laughter]
Burchill: “Well, it doesn’t mean you’d have been that good though.”
Stoner: “Well, that’s true. That’s definitely true. So, I’ve always been fond of the place.
At the time, I thought it best if I could get closer to home and family. I knew both
Mr. Frith at K-State and Mr. Wilson at Kansas would be retiring within a few years, and
so I just watched for those. Mr. Wilson retired about two or three years before Mr. Frith
did, and I applied for that position. I figured I would apply for one and if I didn’t get the
one, then the other one would be my back-up, and I would go for it.”
Burchill: “And the one you got was the Director of Student Housing? Was that the
title?”
18
Stoner: “Yeah, here at KU, that’s correct.”
Burchill: “I’m going to shut up and let you review your responsibilities while you were
here, and I know from reading your resume that they were enormous. Just go through
that as you will.”
Stoner: “Okay.”
Burchill: “And I’m going to stop you in two minutes.”
Stoner: “Okay. Yeah. I came here. There were four areas of Student Housing that I
had. There was the food service, there was the facilities maintenance of the housing
facilities, there was the administrative part of it (the paperwork, the payroll, the student
employees, all the administrative, purchasing, personnel, you know, the paperwork end of
it), and then the other is residence life, which is what most people see, that’s the RA’s
and the programs and the hall directors and the activities that go on in the halls, and the
educational emphasis programs. Those are the four areas of Housing that I had when I
was here at the university.”
Burchill: “I have a question about over-booking residence halls. I’ve read somewhere
that you say that’s a standard practice because people are ‘no-shows’ or something.”
Stoner: “Correct.”
Burchill: “What’s that all about? How in the world do you decide how much to over-
book, and does it work out every year or do you end up with too many students?”
Stoner: “Oh, pretty close. As it generally works out, you have to be careful when you do
it. You want to over-book on the short side rather than the high side, but it’s just like
airlines. Airlines over-book a couple of tickets every flight. Well then, there’s going to
19
be somebody that doesn’t show up, and so that way you fly full. The idea is to fly as full
as you can without having to stand up there and say, ‘Hey, we’ll give somebody a free
ticket if they get off the plane’, you know, and so the idea is that you always have a few
people that you put up temporarily, knowing that there are some who won’t show up. So
the first day of classes when the no-shows are identified, then you slip those people over
into them so you are just as full as possible. So it’s the same philosophy or phenomenon
on that.”
Burchill: “Okay, let’s pick it up here. I guess one thing I’m curious about, given the
breadth of your responsibilities, is the most recurring ‘normal’, if you will, problems in
all of those areas. What was it that gave you the most trouble, or required most of your
attention?”
Stoner: “I think, on the student side of things, I think universities are still struggling on
how to do with the new freedom that students have, and particularly the alcohol issue.
Almost every problem that surfaced, as a sidebar probably 90% of the time there was
alcohol involved, or as a sidebar of some sort of an issue, so I think the alcohol problem
or the alcohol issue on college campuses – not KU, but every campus – has to do with
issues associated with alcohol. So I think on the student behavioral side, it’s just that
we’ve never really effectively dealt with how to effectively address those concerns. I
think the other issue was on the facilities side. Universities, by their nature, and states,
and everything to deal with, often are very bureaucratic, and just trying to move facility
renovations or facility improvements, or address facilities through the system was a… ”
Burchill: “You had a lot of growth, didn’t you, a lot of resident and scholarship halls
and…”
Stoner: “Well, we built three new scholarships, and a new dining commons on the
growth side of it, and then it was renovation and restoration of the, well, we did four
while I was here: Templin, Lewis, Ellsworth, and then Hashinger opened this fall. It was
20
the one we had in progress when I left. So those four were total restorations of the
buildings.”
Burchill: “You went to suites – in some of them, at least – from rooms to suites. Is that
because students demanded it?”
Stoner: “Well, I think so. It gave them more space. Where we had three double rooms
before we ended up with one suite of four people. The interesting thing is it doesn’t
change our occupancy any, because the students were buying up the double rooms as
doubles and singles.”
Burchill: “For heaven’s sake.”
Stoner: “And so even though we reduced the capacity of the building by doing that we
still had the same number of people living there. So it didn’t change the occupancy
numbers any at all.”
Burchill: “That helps, because I have often wondered what did you do with those other
people.”
Stoner: “Right. It’s interesting. They like it that way. It gives them a little more
privacy, a little more room. They’ve got little kitchen zap stations in there, microwaves
and little refrigerators in there and sinks, and hand sinks in the bathroom in their suites.
They seem to like that additional space and privacy, and so we have gone to suites in a
number of those renovations.”
Burchill: “What do you consider your successes, if you had to highlight a few things
while you were at KU?”
Stoner: “Well, I certainly think the scholarship halls. When I arrived, there was
discussion of whether their time was over, maybe they had served their purposes, and
21
would they continue, sort of like a co-op movement – had their time come? They are
marginal, I mean, financially they are marginal, they just break even, and so you would
have to really invest in them to keep them going. And so the question was just kind of
what to do with them. Fortunately, and I think that rightly so, the decision was that they
are a great value to the university and they are great living communities, and yes, they
might be marginal financially, but as long we could make the capital side of it work from
donors who gave us the money to renovate or gave us some money to build new ones,
that it would not require an investment of $3,000,000 to build a fifty-person hall, which is
essentially what the new scholarship halls run… ”
Burchill: “Do they attract high quality students? That’s one reason to really figure out a
way to do it, isn’t it?”
Stoner: “Oh yes. Oh yeah, they do. They attract high quality students. They tend to
check in as freshmen and they tend to check out as seniors. They’ve got great retention,
and so it’s a great system. I think it’s a jewel for KU, but I think we were struggling a
little bit when I came, but I think during that period of time those issues were
successfully addressed. All the buildings were air conditioned, all were sprinkled, all
were upgraded and renovated. We built three new ones. Mrs. Strait’s house is in the
process of being converted to a community center.”
Burchill: “My daughter took piano lessons there.”
Stoner: [Laughter] “I think everybody inside of Lawrence took piano lessons there. So
that’s one that I really feel good about on accomplishments during the period of time, that
and the restoration of the four halls. I wished I’d had six done, but again, the timing and
how long it takes to get things done sometimes, but I feel good about those four, that they
are very popular, they are very well occupied, the students like them. In fact, as kind of a
sidebar, just before I came here [to the interview] I stopped by Hashinger and was
wandering through it just looking over there. I saw a young man come out of the room
and I asked if I could see his room and he said, ‘Sure’. So he showed me his room and
22
we were talking and I asked him if he liked living there. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. Then he
said, ‘Well then, who are you?’ I said, ‘Well, I was here when this thing was designed
and part of that and stuff, but I just wasn’t here when it opened, and I just wanted to get
back and see what it looked like.’ We were walking and just chatting and I thanked him,
and as I was leaving and walking down the hall, he said, ‘Hey, thanks for building this
place. It’s really neat’. And I think that’s what… if the students like it and you’re
really… so I think that’s what feels good. So I’d say the restorations of the halls, and
particularly the scholarship halls, going to the dining commons concepts [went from eight
cafeterias to three dining commons], I think that was a real plus for us.”
Burchill: “That’s a nice place.”
Stoner: “A nice place. I think a couple of minor side things that I would mention is that
LeaderShape©, the LeaderShape© thing was originally Housing funded and got that off
the ground that they do every year with the students.”
Burchill: “I don’t know what that is.”
Stoner: “Oh, over holiday break in January they bring a group of sixty to eighty student
leaders back, and they take them all for a retreat, and they bring in people, and it’s called
‘LeaderShape©’. It’s the principles of leadership, and they just really have a great time.
They take them off to one of the camps and stuff, and I think that’s been a real plus. The
readership program where the newspapers are on campus was an initiative that Housing
really promoted and was able to achieve campus-wide. And of course Endowment, that
was fun, I enjoyed working with the Endowment people in helping… Well, they raise
funds. I said, ‘You raise funds, I’ll try to raise friends’. [Laughter] So I think that…”
Burchill: “You didn’t really get into the… except maybe you would talk to people they
would bring you?”
23
Stoner: “Yeah, well, and occasionally I would take them people. I’d say, ‘I think that
this is somebody that you might want to talk to’. I learned a lot in that process. But,
again, I didn’t ever directly ask anybody for money unless I was with the Endowment
person that wanted me to go along. It was an interesting process of how you identify
people, identify friends and people that might be partial to the university.”
Burchill: “Anything else you’d like to say about your responsibilities, and then I’m
going to move on to some other things.”
Stoner: “No, I don’t think of anything offhand.”
Burchill: “Okay, let me talk a little bit about your career. You belonged to a lot of
professional organizations, and you had offices in those organizations. Anything you
want to say about that, that people ought to know?”
Stoner: “Well, I think the one that was probably the most significant, I was president of
the Association of College and University Housing Officers International, and I’ve often
thought about that because I really… I don’t think of myself as exceptionally brilliant or
exceptionally smart or exceptionally anything. You know, I’m just a son of a blue collar
family, and you work hard and you’re persistent, and you set goals and objectives, and
you work toward achieving them. So I think that the fact that average people get
recognized sometimes as extraordinary has always been a bit of a mystery to me, but I
find that… so probably the office with the housing officers is the one that I…”
Burchill: “Is that the one that gave you Shaper of Housing award?”
Stoner: “Yes.”
Burchill: “That’s a very good award. Talk about that award.”
Stoner: “On the fiftieth anniversary of that association, they did some sort of kind of a
Delphi technique survey of the people who were out there, the retirees, and other people
24
who were with the profession of the housing officers, and they say, essentially the
question was, ‘Who has changed the profession, or who has helped shape the profession
of housing officers in the last fifty years that has made a difference?’ or kind of changed
the way we are going, or one of the shapers. And so, I think they identified eighteen or
maybe nineteen individuals through that particular research. I was one of the individuals
that ended up on that list.”
Burchill: “I’m not sure that’s a blue collar award. [Laughter] I think that means more
than that.”
Stoner: “Well. It meant a lot to me but I’m still… but you know I’m… I’m taking too
much time here, Brower, but you know, I remember this to this day: I think the thing that
got me started with the housing officers was just that universities have a lot of things that
just need done. Just like, you were probably on more committees than any other faculty
member I ever knew.”
Burchill: “I’m sure. But you’ve been on a huge number.”
Stoner: “But that’s what makes the difference. When I was at South Florida, I was down
there – the Director of Housing came in and here were all the hall directors, we were
sitting around the table, and he says, ‘I’ve got a problem, I need somebody to take
minutes for me at a meeting I’ve got coming up tomorrow, and get donuts and get some
stuff around.’ He said, ‘I know it’s not much, it’s kind of grunt work, but anybody in the
room, anybody here who will do that for me…’ (and we are all Master’s degree people,
of course, we are ‘professionals’, you know). We all kind of sat there and looked at each
other and I thought, ‘Okay, the boss. What the heck. The boss needs something done. I
can type. I can take minutes. I mean, this is no…’ I don’t consider that beneath me and
stuff. And so I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do that’. ‘So okay,’ he said, ‘We’ll leave for Miami
tomorrow morning’. He said, ‘The meeting is over at Miami’. [Laughter] Everybody
started kind of looking around and stuff. Well, it turns out, whoever was supposed to be
the secretary for the Association of Housing Officers Research and Information
25
Committee wasn’t going to be able to be there. So I wasn’t taking minutes for him [Mr.
King]; I was taking minutes for this committee of ACUHO. So I did, I got the donuts, I
kept the minutes. I got the minutes out fine. Everybody thought they were accurate and
they appreciated that. So I think it went like that, you know. So after about a month he
came back and he said, ‘Ken, we meet every six months. We think you did a nice job.
We’ll be going to New York’ [for the next meeting]. So, just because I was willing to do
what needed to be done, I became involved with one of the more significant committees
of ACUHO. I did clerical work for that committee for a couple of years, and then I think
they were embarrassed that I was… and so then they just appointed me to the committee.
[Laughter] And so now I am on a committee that is full of PhD’s and the people that,
you know… the Hal Riker’s of the profession, the people who were the shakers and
movers at the time. So that put me in contact. I often think about that, just the little
things, saying, ‘Yeah, I can take some minutes. I don’t mind getting the donuts. I can do
some committee work, or I can help out’, you know. I think probably doing things like
that over the years is probably what moved me forward in the career more than being
exceptionally smart or exceptionally…”
Burchill: “I feel like I’m in exactly the same situation as you are describing. What about
all this consultation? I counted sixty-two consultantships that you’re involved in. Who
are those with and what do they entail?”
Stoner: “Many of them, with the exception of the legal ones, many of them, oh,
campuses do their five or their ten year review, and so you have to have an outside
consultant come in. ACUHO has a set of standards that you are judged against, so
oftentimes I am invited to a campus and I take the standards and they go with me, and I
say, ‘You are in compliance. Here are areas to strengthen, areas that you exceed’. So I
write up a report on the campus. Often it’s in conjunction with some sort of an
accreditation or a five year or ten year thing like that. And I think I get called (I don’t do
those as much as I used to), but I get called because I think I really do work at trying to
be helpful. I don’t come in and bag the campus. I mean, we’ve all got our strengths and
our weaknesses, and I think people found what I was doing useful to them and not… you
26
know, I don’t damage universities or, you know… it’s a way to build them up and
strengthen them and be helpful. So most of them had to do with stuff along those lines.
Occasionally there was a special focus like a security audit or something like that, but for
the most part they’re just organizational reviews.”
Burchill: “Now, community involvement while you were in Lawrence. I jotted down a
few things that are significant to me – the Warm Hearts?”
Stoner: “Yeah, it’s a local group that does an annual fund raiser and tries to provide
utility coverage and funding for the winter months for people who may not be able to,
particularly in those years where natural gas and some of the other utilities are sky high,
they may not be able to fund them. It’s mostly natural gas, but some electricity, propane
and even, in some cases, wood stoves. We provide the fuel or provide the resources so
they can do that. So I was on that body for, I don’t know, a number of years on that, and
was President one year.”
Burchill: “And then Headquarters?”
Stoner: “Headquarters Counseling Center, again another valuable resource for the
community, kind of a counseling and help line for people to call and talk to people and
stuff. So I was a member of that for awhile.”
Burchill: “And then you were a Scoutmaster? I mean that’s, you’re really, things are
adding up here.” [Laughter]
Stoner: [Laughter] “Yeah. I was an Assistant Scoutmaster for a local troop. And I
traveled with them while my son was going through the scouting thing. I had gone
through the training and was certified as an Assistant Scoutmaster and did some of the
troop things with them.”
Burchill: “Was that with Methodist Church?”
27
Stoner: “Actually, that was with First Christian.”
Burchill: “First Christian?”
Stoner: “Yeah, yeah, down at the Kentucky St.…”
Burchill: “You were active in the First United Methodist Church, you had offices and
stuff?”
Stoner: “Right. Yeah, that’s correct. Well, with some of these big Scout troops, religion
doesn’t have much to do with it. It’s where all the friends are going. So whatever Cub
Scout group he was out of, most of them seemed to be going into the Troop 59 at the First
Christian Church, so that’s…”
Burchill: “I belonged to the Christian Church and I was in the Methodist Scout Troop.”
Stoner: [Laughter] “Well, we’re pretty ecumenical about these things.”
Burchill: “And then the Chamber of Commerce, you were a member of that.”
Stoner: “Well, yes. I’ll tell a little story on Dr. Ambler. When I came here, I think it
was in the job description, but maybe in the letter he wrote me, there was a set of
expectations. But at the very bottom it said, ‘…and be a good citizen of the community.’
Well, I think I’m a good citizen, but I really didn’t know what that meant. I told
Dr. Ambler, I said, ‘What does it mean to be a good citizen of Lawrence? I mean, does
this have some special…’, and he said, ‘Here’s what it means: You join some club, I
don’t care whether it’s Rotary, Kiwanis, the Lions or whatever, but some community
service club like that, and you’re a member of the Chamber of Commerce’. He gave me
about three or four things and I said, ‘I can do those things’. [Laughter] So I just was
trying to do that. He said, ‘When you’re a member of the Chamber of Commerce I want
28
you to go to the “breakfast and issues” thing [periodic program with C of C] and mix
with the people down there and just see… stay in touch with the community. So that’s
how I became involved with the Chamber of Commerce. Oh, I ended up on their
Leadership Lawrence committees and doing a few of those things for them, and one
Traffic Committee, maybe two Traffic Committees over the years, I don’t know, but just,
you know, a few things with them.”
Burchill: “That’s good. Okay, now let’s talk about why you left, why you retired at KU
and took I think a similar position at the University of Tennessee.”
Stoner: “I really thought this would be my last step. I really did. This was going to be
my last stop. I had moved my parents here to town. They had been retired for years so
they live here in Lawrence now. But we had always been partial to Tennessee from that
twelve years we had lived there, and I had always… we had often talked about maybe we
would get back to the Smoky area, the Smoky Mountain area, to retire. This position
actually carries a dual title. I’m Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and
Executive Director of University Housing, and so I have some Student Affairs issues to
deal with – the Health Center and the Union and Housing and some things. So it’s a little
broader position. It puts us back in the area and I thought we could look for something
over there and maybe this would be, rather than going cold turkey and maybe trying to
move back there at some point, that we would get back there and look around and that
would actually be our last stop, although it’s just interesting how things work out
sometimes.”
Burchill: “Yeah, well I had a feeling from reading the materials that you really enjoyed
your time in Tennessee.”
Stoner: “We did. Both our children were born there and our friends, I mean great
friends, great relations, many of whom are still there, and we’ve traveled back and forth.
All the kids were raised about the same age, went to each other’s weddings, and all the
events that we have. That’s been wonderful. Those friends are still there and that will be
29
a great… you know, so we’ll… it just kind of happened. The man that’s my boss, I find
this interesting, called me, when he first called me I told him, ‘No. Naw, Tim, I’m not
coming back’. The man that’s my boss, Tim Rogers, I had actually hired him as a Hall
Director when I was there before. He stayed at Tennessee and now he’s the Vice
Chancellor for Student Affairs. The man that was there left fairly unexpectedly for health
reasons in December and he [Tim] called me. I told him no, I just couldn’t. Well, then
we talked about it over Christmas and the holidays, and I think I called him back about, I
don’t know, late January or early February and we talked about it again, and he flew me
out. Then I just headed out that way. It’s just one of those things that worked out.”
Burchill: “Now this is a question that I always end these interviews with, so don’t get
mad at me, all right? What is your assessment of KU as a university?”
Stoner: “Well, it’s a great university. As with many great universities it has a lot of
challenges, you know, and there’s always some challenges and struggles and issues that
have to be addressed. Those that successfully address them continue to become better,
and those that are unsuccessful or don’t address them as well as others, then they tend not
to remain premier institutions. But I think it’s a great place. I love this place. I’m
always watching them and have a great place in my heart for the University of Kansas.”
Burchill: “You’re not sorry you came here?”
Stoner: “No, no, no. I’m very happy I came to the university. Dr. Ambler was one of
the best. Who you work for was always more important to me than how much you made
or a lot of the other things and stuff. He was a purist. I mean, I always knew that he
would always come down on the side of philosophically in the profession and the issues,
and he was always predictable in that way. He was always supportive, he allowed me
opportunities (like to become involved with Endowment and some of the student
organizations and the other things there), and so it was a tremendous time for me in
growth opportunity and I have no regrets at all about coming to the university.”
30
Burchill: “Very good. Anything else you didn’t get to say about anything of a personal
nature, philosophy, politics, health, athletics? You have the podium.”
Stoner: “There was the question about the assessment of KU as a university. I think it’s
a great public university. I think one thing I’d say is that public universities, they’re all
getting into the rating game, and I think you live by the ratings and you die by the ratings,
and I’m hoping… it’s like athletic teams, you know, any way you cut it 50 percent of the
teams are going to have losing records each year. Then the 50 percent that lose, they fire
their coaches and go try to find a coach from the top 50. I hope, not KU specifically, but
all universities, it seems – I’ve seen portions of that, I saw it here, I could see it at
Tennessee, I can see it at other public universities – is that getting caught up in all the
institutions in the United States are not going to be in the top 20. You might have certain
programs or certain specialties or niches, or whatever, but I think that across the board
universities in general just need to be careful about getting so absorbed in the rating
game. I think that was the only thing that I jotted down that I was concerned about
universities in general for the future. I think you’ve covered it. I think you’ve covered
it.”
Burchill: “Well, I very much appreciate your… Dr. Stoner came back to Lawrence for
this interview. We normally have an opportunity to interview retired faculty while
they’re still here, but he came back and I’m very grateful for that, and applaud your
career, and appreciate it very much.”
Stoner: “Thank you. It’s always good to see you, Brower. Thank you very much, my
friend.”