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LASTING IMPACT
Early on the morning of June 29, 1999, only hours after leading a final
conference call with his Cabinet, Chancellor Michael Hooker passed away as
a result of complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and the University of
North Carolina lost its leader and a cherished son. On the fifth anniversary of
his passing, Inside Carolina examines the powerful impact his legacy has had
upon the University and the athletics program.
 Inside Carolina Magazine
Summer, 2004
WORDS: Scott Cline
PHOTOS: Dan Sears |
ny understanding of what Chancellor Michael Hooker did
must of necessity be prefaced by an examination of who he
was. The son of a coal miner who grew up in the Appalachia
region of Virginia, Hooker was the first in his family to go to
college, graduating from UNC with a degree in philosophy in 1969.
He went on to earn both a masters and a doctorate degree from
UMass-Amherst, followed by a three-year stint teaching philosophy
at Harvard.
In 1975, Hooker then moved on to Johns Hopkins as an
administrator, serving as both the dean of undergraduate and graduate
studies during his tenure there, which ended in 1982 when he left to
lead small Vermont’s Bennington College. The Bennington job opened
the door for Hooker to assume the presidency at Maryland-Baltimore
County, where he served as Chancellor for four years concluding in
1986. His final job before coming back to North Carolina was as
leader of the five-school University of Massachusetts system, where
he was a pivotal factor in academic and systemic improvements that
have vaulted his alma mater Amherst and the associated schools into
the upper echelon of academic achievement.
In July of 1995, Hooker accepted the position of Chancellor at
UNC. As he walked this long and winding path back to Chapel Hill, he
and his wife, Carmen, had a daughter, Alexandra.
The impressive resume isn’t what the University community or
the state at large remembers about Hooker, however. His innovative
approach to life, his willingness to travel the state in order to get the
pulse of the people, and the challenges that it posed stand out among
a host of emotional and intellectual responses that flow forth with the
mere mention of his name.
“Often times it is hard to understand new leadership, and
he brought an intellectual consciousness to our university that
challenged everyone,” said Johnny Harris, the man who chaired the
selection committee that chose Hooker for the Chancellor’s role. “I
hope his greatest legacy will be that no institution can stand on the
status quo, but must change with the times.” That sentiment echoed
throughout the proceedings in the immediate aftermath of his death,
and still carries over today – even to the average student who was
only exposed to him as a figure atop the University hierarchy.
“Chancellor Hooker was the only administrator I ever cared about
at all,” said Brent Hampton, who was a sophomore when Hooker died.
“He just always seemed to try to make things better for us, as students,
rather than as numbers. He went to my parents’ town and they got a
chance to ask him about computers for those of us who couldn’t afford
them, and now everyone has them.”
Despite the deserved praise that immediately comes forth from
anyone asked about the ex-Chancellor, it wasn’t always easy working
with a visionary, in either the academic or the athletic setting. Working
with Hooker was, however, always beneficial according to all reports.
“Michael was a challenging person to work with,” said Dr. Richard
Anders, chair of the faculty at UNC at the time of Hooker’s death.
“We didn’t always agree, and he often pushed the faculty beyond our
comfort zone. But he picked up and adopted and supported initiatives
– freshman seminars, advising reform, and the rest of the Intellectual
Climate report, the creation of a
University Priorities and Budget
Committee, labor standards for
university logo licensees, and others
– and I always felt he was someone
with whom I could speak openly,
could argue with if we disagreed, and
could persuade to change his mind.”
The Carolina Computing
Initiative, the program that Hampton
referenced, requires and ensures
that each entering UNC freshman
has a laptop computer. The CCI is
often the first thing which enters the
minds of UNC students and alumni
when they hear the name “Michael
Hooker,” but it was far from his
only innovation which continues to
have a marked effect upon Carolina.
LEARN, or Learners’ and Educators’
Assistance and Resource Network
of North Carolina, serves as an
invaluable resource for public school
teachers throughout the state and
was a project that Hooker placed
particular emphasis on and later
became the basis of a national
program. The list does not begin, or
end, there.
The impression that Hooker
made upon the University rings
clear to the new Chancellor, James
Moeser. “Michael Hooker provided dynamic leadership to his
beloved alma mater and helped make aspiring toward excellence
an important focus of the Carolina family. We continue to see the
results of initiatives he helped nurture come to fruition in ways that
are making our University and North Carolina better. His enthusiasm
for Carolina athletics also is fondly remembered, and the intramural
field beside Carmichael Auditorium fittingly bears his name.”
“I hope his greatest legacy will
be that no institution can stand
on the status quo, but must
change with the times.”
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The intramural field is indeed a fitting memorial, for the field
itself is the result of one of Hooker’s famous innovative brainstorming
sessions, though not in quite the fashion that he had hoped.
“He was very interested in the concept of a surface that would
allow for added and convenient parking for women’s basketball and
other events at Carmichael, yet still be a top-flight playing facility,” said
Athletics Director Dick Baddour. “Michael asked me to look into that,
and we did so, but it turned out that the two were mutually exclusive.
That is the type of direction he would approach things from, trying to
maximize the benefit to the people and students of the University.”
While the field may not currently double as a parking lot, it is
one of the finest surfaces used solely by students participating in
intramural sports in the entire country. Hooker’s desire to breath new
life into the sporting environment at UNC wasn’t by any means limited
to the non-scholarship world, and indeed at times spilled over into
the realm of the athletics department
– with occasionally humorous results.
“I remember one time we had
a guy show up on a Saturday of a
football game, at Kenan Stadium,
wanting to set up his funnel cake
machine and sell funnel cakes. After
some investigation, it turned out that
Michael had been down to a county
fair on one of the trips throughout
the state he emphasized and had
really enjoyed the man’s funnel
cakes. He enjoyed them so much,
in fact, that he had told him that
people at Kenan would just love to
have some of his funnel cakes and
to come down on Saturday to sell
them at the stadium,” Baddour said
with a grin and a shake of his head.
“Of course the first we heard about
it was when he showed up on that
Saturday to sell them, and I had to
emphasize to Michael that we had
substantial agreements with certain
companies about what was sold at
UNC athletic events. That’s just the
way he looked at it; people would
like to buy the man’s funnel cakes.”
Baddour, like Andrews on the
academic side of the house, had his
differences of opinion with Hooker;
yet as with Andrews, the two found
methods through compromise to maximize the benefit to the University.
“One of the differences we had was, we had a drug policy in
place with a strong emphasis on an educational component to it. This
was in 1987, and the NCAA went into drug testing at the same time
but they didn’t really have any educational component to theirs, only
a consequence, which was you fail and you are out for a year. We
had a drug testing policy independent of the NCAA’s that said the first
time at a minimum you were on probation, the second time you were
suspended for a game, and the third time you were out for a year,”
said Baddour.
“When he heard that there were differences in the policies, he
disagreed with that and thought they should be one in the same, that
if you failed any drug test then you were out for a year. It took me a
while to convince him that the educational component was important,
to compromise, but it was definitely two strikes and you were out
after that. We met halfway, which is what we often did on issues of
contention, to best result I think.”
“His enthusiasm for Carolina athletics
is fondly remembered, and the
intramural field beside Carmichael
Auditorium fittingly bears his name.”
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It seems only fitting to conclude a look back at the impact that
Hooker had upon academics and athletics at Carolina the same
way that Baddour ended his interview on the topic, for the story
he told when trying to articulate Hooker’s greatest contribution to
the University effectively summates each discussion and reading
undertaken in the production of
this retrospective.
“I think his message to
the University, and it was loud
and clear, was let’s recognize
that athletics are a part of the
University, that they are inclusive,
and let’s celebrate it – but it is
not dominant. Others had said it
before him, and made it equally clear, but he said it with the fact that
athletics were not separate but part of the whole in mind. A story that
illustrates the point …”
I was invited to a meeting with numerous department heads
and deans and all I knew was that it was to discuss this major
fundraising campaign. I really didn’t even know why I had
gotten the memo, because athletic fundraising and academic
fundraising had always been separate. I remember, I was in
the meeting, and they announced the Carolina First campaign.
He was asked the question ‘Are athletics going to be a part
of this?’ and he responded, in a second, ‘Yes, of course they
will be.’ That had not always been the case; in fact, when
we were trying to build this building [the Smith Center], the
response had been that
the academic fundraising
campaign meant that the
two had to be separate and
Michael said ‘No. It doesn’t
have to be that way. It can
all be part of a campaign
together, for the betterment
of all of UNC, and people
can make choices if that is
what they want to do.’ I was then instructed to develop a plan
for what we would do, and we came up with the endowment
program for the scholarships. That is what we decided to
do, and I think that program more than anything else saved
the whole idea of how we run athletics at UNC and has been
remarkably successful.
Like his decision to include athletics under the umbrella of the
Carolina First campaign, Michael Hooker’s presence and abilities
as Chancellor have paid untold dividends to the University of North
Carolina and to the people of the state.
Five years later, his memory lives on.
Scott Cline (scott@insidecarolina.com) is the sports editor at the Jamestown News. |