What's your favorite food?

This is a tough one because I like so many things.  I'd like to seem to have sophisticated taste, but I really don't.  Like all southerners, I'm all too fond of fried food, especially fried crawfish and fried catfish.  I like pizza and Mexican food a lot, too.  Fresh vegetables, especially spinach and other leafy green things, are favorites, as well.  The best meal I ever had was a paella in a little restaurant in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. 

What would you say is your favorite/most memorable college experience?

Wow; this is another tough one.  I enjoyed so much of college that it's hard to pinpoint a single favorite experience.  I guess I loved my very first college class:  the seriousness and peculiarity of the professor (Kenneth R. Smith), the "exotic" nature of the subject matter (Homer's Odyssey), and the seeming brilliance of my classmates.  Later in time, I had other "favorite" experiences, as well.  I still remember going to see Leni Riefehnstahl's Triumph of the Will to satisfy a class assignment and finding myself curiously, frighteningly mesmerized by the film.  I learned something scary about myself and about how easy it is to manipulate human emotion.  I also have fond memories of certain teachers and the way that they made me feel "at home" in the classroom environments that they built:  Jim Bolner in political science; Charlie Bigger in philosophy; Bob Haymaker in physics.

What do you like to do in your free time?

Well, I really like to run, although I'm not very fast.  I love to walk the streets in big cities.  San Francisco, Washington, New York, and New Orleans are favorites.  I like to hike in National Parks:  I love Sequoia, Yellowstone, and the Great Smokies.  I really enjoy watching movies, the older, the better.  And, not surprisingly, I love to read.

What type of music do you enjoy? Favorite music group?

Ah, here my taste really is deplorable.  I'm hopelessly hooked on the music of my youth.  I have lots of LP's that I still listen to: the complete output of the Jimi Hendrix Experience; the entire oeuvre of Jefferson Airplane; selected albums from the Beatles, Santana, Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Neil Young, too).  I guess it's somewhat redemptive that I like Mozart and Beethoven, though I'm a pretty untutored listener.

Favorite TV Show/Movie?

Well, the indisputably best shows on (network) TV were The Andy Griffith Show (with Don Knotts and Ron Howard), The Twilight Zone (the original Rod Serling production), Star Trek (the cheesy original), Hill Street Blues, The West Wing, The X-Files, and The Simpsons.  I have about six favorite films:  It's a Wonderful Life, Casablanca, Saving Private Ryan, Key Largo, Star Wars, and Lawrence of Arabia, in about that order.  Really, I like just about any movie starring Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Stewart or directed by Frank Capra or John Ford. 

Where did you grow up?

During my early years I bounced around: Venezuela, Florida, France, Texas, Venezuela again.  By the time I was seven, I had settled in Shreveport, Louisiana, and that's where I stayed until going off to college at age eighteen.

If you could give one piece of advice to college students, what would it be?

Be as voraciously curious as you were when you were little and always asked your parents the "why" questions:  why is the sky blue; why does that man stand that way; why does the car's hood get so hot in the sunshine, etc.?  Aristotle says, "All human beings by nature desire to know."  Make sure that that is true of yourself:  Desire to know as much about as many things as you can.  Never stop seeking knowledge.

What are you most looking forward to about Wartburg?

Wow, here again, it'd be tough to point to a single thing.  I'm eager to immerse myself in the Wartburg community, to meet and to get to know as many of the students, faculty, staff, and alumni as I possibly can.  I'm looking forward to the progress that we are going to make, as a college community, during the next several years.  I want to share in the excellence that I witness every time that I converse with an alum at an Outfly, or read the news from campus, or interact with a student. 

Anything else you'd like to mention.