Interim President Brown took office during a difficult time for WPI. A year ago, controversial issues such as parking space, campus center, and name and logo change were the daily campus news. In five months, after his appointment, he has not only taken up where ex-president Strauss left off but he also seems to have matters under control.
What few people know about this 70 year-old man, who not only holds the most important position on campus but also has the ability to make anybody feel welcome, is that he sat in the same classrooms we sit everyday.
President Brown graduated in 1945 with a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering. He is a brother of the Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji) Chapter at WPI and used to be an excellent soccer player. Believe it or not, 50 years after his graduation he has come back as President of his alma mata.
Sitting in a corner of his luxurious office we started talking, and almost immediately you can feel the energy emanating from him.
Since he graduated in 1945, he has kept in touch with all the happenings in WPI. He became a member of the board of trustees in 1970 and served in that role for a little over 12 years. He also had the experience of being the President of the University of South Florida (USF) from 1978 to 1988. USF has a student body of 34,000 students.
The selection committee also interviewed 7 other candidates for the job and decided to ask John Brown to fill in the position of Interim President. "I was very exited about the possibility and I said I would take it and here I am." At the moment of the call he had already stepped down as President of USF and was acting as Interim Director of the Center for Microelectronics Research at USF.
Becoming the president of the school he graduated from is a pleasant experience for him. "The fact that on the Spring of 1995, 50 years after I graduated from WPI, I'll be presiding over the graduation exercises is very exciting to me." He also assured that one was of the main reasons why he took office. "I just wish that some of the professors that were here when I went to school, who probably had severe doubts as to whether or not I would be able to be a success in anything, were around to see that I've come back in this role. That would be a lot of fun," he adds with a smile.
Commenting on how WPI has changed since he graduated he mentions "the war time effect on the nature of being a student at WPI is a very large effect." The Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor on December of 1941 and he enrolled in WPI in the fall of 1942. "The country was at war. The future was uncertain for most young people," he says, "different times, different types of weaponry, different kinds of political relations exist now." Although he explains that it was a totally different experience, he does recall other things. "Most of the buildings did not exist. Daniels and Morgan did not exist. The Library did not exist either"
When asked about the social life he brings about the war-time issue, but says "As a freshman at WPI, I was in a class of around 200 people. We were rushed by fraternities. I chose to go Phi Gamma Delta. WPI was much more smaller. There were no women at WPI."
He finished his first year as a civilian then joined the navy so he could get into the navy college program. "I was assigned to Sanford Riley Barracks which was an all navy student housing, so we were up at 6:00 and out in the Quadrangle doing calisthenics every morning. That continued till I graduated," he says reminiscing. "Looking back I have the impression I got an excellent education."
Of course, the means of teaching have also changed. Not only did they not have women at WPI, they also had more lab courses and classes on Saturdays. "Things are different now. One does not sit at the drawing table, one learns computer aided design and how to do things without having to hold a pen and not having to fill a pen with Indian ink and be careful not to spill it all over the table." He said. "Things are easier and better now."
"In my days lab reports had to be done in Indian Ink. If you submitted a report with anything other than Indian Ink, and it was easier to fill a fountain pen with black ink and graph with it than to use Indian Ink, there were professors that if they thought you had not used Indian Ink, they would put a finger on their mouth and get it nicely wet and rub it all over your drawing -Indian Ink is not water soluble as regular ink is- and if it was not Indian Ink it would smeared all over the place and you had to go home and redo the whole drawing."
Looking back he advises students to work hard on their first two years. "The harder you work as a student, as a freshman and as a sophomore the easier it is. You go further to get the most of your studies with relatively less expenditure of energy."
Interim President John Brown says that he has enjoyed the experience of working as WPI's President. "I've enjoyed the whole experience It is hard to say what I enjoy the most. I've gotten involved with a lot of good people who are working hard to make things happen."
"Being the President of a University is an interesting kind of assignment. It is not a simple cold cut assignment. You have a personal responsibility for all activities going on." He also mention that it is a job that takes a lot of time and dedication and sometimes you have to deal with unique problems. "Down in Florida, on one occasion, the pumping system that pumps sewage from the dormitory broke down between midnight and four a.m. I probably got a dozen phone calls from the parents, mainly of female students, expressing their concerns that their daughter had no way of relieving themselves in the middle of the night and what was I going to do about it."
"What I did was to set up a bus service to carry anyone who had to go to the bathroom to another place where it was possible to do that. That is the sort of thing that a president may have to do that is something you don't immediately think of what a president is doing as opposed to directing the activities of the university." He mentions that in WPI he didn't have the chance to deal with anything as radical as that, but he assures that the Institute has kept him busy.
When asked for his plans for the future he pauses and smiles, "let me put it this way... In 1988 I stepped down as President and I was invited to take up appointments in several different places. I chose to accept a half time appointment in the college of medicine and a half time appointment with the college of engineering, from 1988 to 1992 when I retired. In retiring I gave up my 10 years appointment and I told them I would be happy to work with them if they needed me to do something and they came up with the director of the Microelectronics Research Center.
"My wife felt that in 1992 when I retired we would go in cruises and visit our children in California, Colorado and Western Michigan and maybe we would do a walking tour of the British isle, and instead of that, I've continued to work. She has the opinion that I don't understand what retirement is about and she would like to help me reshape my understanding of that and I think she has plans for me." He also mentioned that people at USF were also very interested in his comeback, however, the first priority is "maintaining a happy relationship with my wife."
Closing up the interview, he said that the biggest reward "is getting to work with people who are really dedicated to making something happen." In the last couple of weeks President Brown has met with a lot of students from several different organizations on campus to give them an opportunity to ask questions about WPI's future and let their concerns be known to him.
His best advice to the students is to take advantage of all the opportunities that WPI offers. "Opportunities present themselves to you along the way, and a big collection of opportunities is thrust at you as a college student. Grab them to the extent that you want to, be interested in them and enjoy them. You'll never regret it."
And who knows, maybe one day we will come back as President, too.