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

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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.”

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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?”

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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?”

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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.”

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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.”

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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]

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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.”

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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?”

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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.”

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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.”

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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

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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?”

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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

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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.”