I'm very proud of the fact that I went to Davidson College.
Back in 1960 when I entered there as a freshman
there were a grand total of two hundred and fifty students in my class
and the whole college had about a thousand students.
We were all white men and we were pretty much all alike.
There was very little diversity at Davidson back then
but it was just an extraordinary education.
It's a small campus, it still is today.
They have extremely talented and highly qualified teachers,
they're great scholars, but they don't have the same focus on research that the faculty at NC State have
so they spend a lot of time with students.
We got to know the faculty very well, they would invite us to their homes on Sunday evening,
and it was just a very different kind of environment from the one here at NC State,
but everybody knew everybody and you spoke to everybody every day when you saw them,
and it was a great time for me.
I majored in psychology
and when I finished my program there
by that point in time I had decided that I wanted to work on a campus.
While I was at Davidson I'd gotten involved in a lot of student activities,
I was a resident advisor in one of the residence halls,
I was active in student government, and so I was encouraged to go to graduate school
if I wanted to work on a campus and so I came to NC State
and finished my master's degree here.
Then I went into the Army, I was in Army ROTC at Davidson,
and I had the honor of being the top cadet my senior year so I was the battalion commander
and I learned a lot about leadership in that program and in that job.
Then after I got out of the Army I went right back into graduate school at Florida State
and for the next three years worked on my PhD down there
and finished it and came to NC State right after that and I've been here ever since.