What About Bob?

An exclusive interview with new chancellor Bob McTeer

By Meredith Gardiner
The Edge
February 2005

On November 4, 2004, the Texas A&M University System handed Robert “Bob” McTeer the reigns to a network of nine universities, seven state agencies, a comprehensive health science center, and an annual budget of $2 billion that supports 100,000 students and 24,500 faculty and staff. In the past, McTeer has served as President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, has been recognized as a “Texas Legend in Business” by Texas Cable News, and has taught for several universities and banking schools around the country. In addition, he received his PhD in economics from the University of Georgia and is well known and appreciated for his creative writing and speaking talents. Now, as fate would have it, he can add the distinguished title of “Aggie” to his impressive list of accolades. In welcoming this new member of the Aggie family, here is an introspective look at the man who sits atop the entire Texas A&M University System.

Let’s begin by taking a glimpse into your background. As a kid growing up, what did you aspire to be?

When I was small, I played a lot of cowboy. I always had a pair of guns on and a hat and I was always building a fort to hold off the outlaws, things like that. I played sports in high school – mainly basketball, but I wasn’t good enough to kid myself that I could do that for a living! As I was getting ready to go to college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. My high school English teacher wanted me to be a lawyer like Clarence Darrow. She gave me these books to read about Darrow, but that didn’t really take. What took was the book, Anatomy of a Murder, and the movie they made out of that with James Stewart as the lawyer. So I could see myself as this underestimated, folksy defense lawyer who always pulled it out of the hat at the last minute and got the innocent guy off. I gave that up when I took a business law class and hated it. I forgot about law at that point.

Are there lessons you learned as a young boy from working at your father’s service station that you still find applicable today?

When I worked there full time, it was just for two summers. I worked from 7pm to 7am. My dad picked up from 7am till 7pm. One thing I learned is punctuality and to stick with it, working long hours. But on Saturday nights, if I had a date, my dad let me come in at midnight instead of 7. So that’s a good lesson in incentives. I always made it a point to have a date.

Dad’s marketing program was that he advertised free coffee to truckers. He had a little sign out front. Of course, that wasn’t a big deal because coffee was only like a nickel or dime then. He gave a 3% discount per gallon to truck drivers. So
I guess those are minor little marketing things that I learned. If you go backward far enough, before I was old enough to work there – I was pretty much raised there. I have joked that long-haired waitresses raised me. But being around waitresses and truck drivers and locals, I think you build some skill in getting along with different kinds of people, mediating in different kinds of situations.

Who or what has most influenced you to be where you are today?

If where I am today is Chancellor of a major university system… I think the regents thought of me as a potential chancellor because of what they regarded as my reputation and my accomplishments in another career. So, I’m over here because of where I was over there. The month before they approached me, I never would have thought of it as a possibility. But if you want to say why am I successful – you might just say that everywhere I’ve been, I’ve tried to do my best and just taken it a step at a time. There’s no magical formula that I know of. Just climb the ladder that is in front of you, one rung at a time. Then, occasionally, you might get the chance to jump over to a better ladder.

What motivates you?

I like the feeling of success and accomplishment. I like to eat too, but I sort of take that part for granted and operate at a different level. I enjoy a job well done or an event that goes well. I enjoy pats-on-the-back. I enjoy “atta-boys,” and being in circumstances where I can give “atta-boys.” That’s going to be hard to spell “atta-boys.”

What is the biggest surprise you’ve encountered since becoming Chancellor?

I guess the fact that when I was interviewing for the job, I never gave any real thought to the fact that I’d be going to football and basketball games. When I got here in early November, the first big thing was going to Aggie football games and that was exciting. I had only gone to one or two college football games in person since I got out of college myself. I went back to the University of Georgia and went to Georgia games but that’s about it. In Dallas, I only went to one Cowboys’ game in person. So to have a convenient, close place to go with a team you can identify with, sort of took me by surprise I must say.

What is your vision for diversity within the entire Texas A&M University System?

I agree that diversity is important, but I don’t think it’s something that’s broken any longer. I think the programs that are already underway have been showing dramatic success so just keeping those going and not letting our guard down is important. We all know the story of what Dr. Gates has done at Texas A&M University, the success and percentage increase in minority enrollment he’s beginning to have there. We just learned recently that in the A&M System, we have made a dramatic increase in the percentage of historically underutilized businesses which we contract for construction, equipment, and supplies to the universities. These businesses are owned by minorities and women and can also be referred to as “HUBs.” We went from usage rates below state averages and below averages of other colleges as well to above average rates. So although we still have a ways to go, we’re well on the way there.

In the upcoming state legislature session, do you expect any legislation to be passed that will dramatically affect the Texas A&M University System?

I doubt that there will be anything that will dramatically affect us. The state always is short on funds. There’s never enough money to go around for all the good causes, and I’m hoping that we can do a little better than the last time and finance some growth. But I know that the legislature has a looming public school issue to deal with that’s going to cost a lot of money, and they have other priorities that are pretty high on the list. So I don’t think anything dramatic will happen one way or the other. I think it will be a “pretty steady as she goes” kind of session.

Do you envision other schools being brought into the A&M System?

Well, you know we’re growing a couple now. We’re working on making Texas A&M-Texarkana a four-year university instead of a two-year upper level school. We have an embryo college near Fort Hood in Killeen. Tarleton State University is sponsoring an upper-level center that will eventually turn into a new university. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board rules are that you have to have a critical mass of students before you can actually go to a four-year college, but that one is on its way. It will be called Tarleton State University-Central Texas. And there is something similar to that going on in San Antonio. The upper-level center in San Antonio is on the Palo Alto College campus and is sponsored by Texas A&M University-Kingsville, and that one will come into being in the next few years. It won’t be in the next year or two but it will be toward the end of the decade when it will be ready.

Do you see A&M eventually having its own law school or strengthening its affiliation with South Texas College of Law?

Well, I haven’t discussed this with regents or with Dr. Gates, so I don’t know what realistic expectations are. However, I would hope that someday, we would have a law school someway.

Who is your favorite poet?

Well, first we have to make it clear that I don’t consider myself a serious poet. I just have fun with it. The poet that has had fun with it, and the one that I’d like to emulate, is Ogden Nash. I qualify that because some poets probably wouldn’t think of him as a real poet. He’s too readable, too understandable, too fun. Let me give you a little Ogden Nash:

“The Lord made the fly and forgot to tell us why.”

“Candy is dandy but liquor
is quicker.”

I used to tell one to money and banking students that I taught, about banking. I use to think that this was a whole poem, but its just part of one:

“Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals. And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it, which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don’t need it.”

Bankers don’t like that, but everybody else does. Ogden Nash was willing to take a crowbar to squeeze a phrase in when there was only room for a word. And he was willing to sort of break the rules to get something to rhyme which is a sign he wasn’t taking himself too seriously, and that’s what I do too. Just have fun with it.

You are noted for your humor in your poetry, speeches, and I’m sure by those close to you, but who makes you laugh?

Who makes me laugh? Boy, that’s a hard one. Well, I’ve come up with some good lines that I enjoy. The people I tend to quote in speeches for humorous comments are people like Richard Pryor and Yogi Berra. I’m usually trying to make a point with a quote from them. Of course just about all of Mae West’s lines are great. And the one I quote is in talking about the new economy and how good everything was in the late 90’s, “too much of a good thing is just about right.”

“You want advice. Well so much of the advice that makes our eyes roll, ‘Work Hard,’ ‘Keep Your Nose Clean,’ ‘Keep it to the grindstone,’ all are clichés. But clichés get to be clichés because they’re generally true, so I agree with most of the clichés – ‘work hard’ and so forth. I usually try to add some value to that by maybe bringing up unconventional things that you don’t normally hear. I’d say early in life be adventuresome. Don’t get tied down to a job too tightly prematurely. Keep looking around; keep seeking what it is that you are going to love. Don’t take a job you don’t like because it pays more. Always take a job you like and always move in the direction of your interests and your talents. Temporarily, you may have to make some sacrifices to do that, but in the long run, that is the only way to ever be successful. Nobody is successful working in an area they don’t like or aren’t suited for. So keep looking early on and don’t get too bogged down. I heard someone say once, ‘Bloom where you’re planted.’ No matter what job you’re in, you probably want another job and to be promoted, but nobody is going to promote you if you don’t do that one pretty well. So you have got to always take the cards you’ve been dealt and play them as well as they can be played. There are certain skills that are unlikely to be made obsolete by technology. One of them is the ability to write. One is the ability is to speak. And if you can do both of those things, then I don’t think I have to say the ability to think because writing is deliberate thinking… so develop those skills. We use to have an essay contest at the Dallas Fed for high school students. We’d have a banquet for the top ten essayists. I usually told them you are going to be writing essays for the rest of your life. So the good news is that you are apparently pretty good at it, but the bad news is that its not about to be over. You won’t be calling them essays most likely for the rest of your life, you’ll be calling them memos and speeches and letters, but it’s all the same thing – it’s all deliberate thinking and being able to communicate effectively.”

Reprinted with permission of The Edge