After 30 years as president, R. Gerald Turner announced he would be stepping down as SMU President. Turner said he always dreamed of becoming a Mustang. Initially, he hoped to join the basketball team, but knee injuries took him out of the game. After a career in administration at institutions like the University of Oklahoma and the University of Mississippi, he got the call to join SMU as its next president. In a conversation with The Daily Campus’ Editor-in-Chief, Katie Bergelin, Turner reveals the importance of building strong relationships, cultivating acceptance within universities and expanding campuses to build success.

Katie Bergelin: You grew up in a family of educators, which I think is really special. How did growing up in that environment shape your view on education?

President Turner: I was very positive about it [education], but like most kids, when you’re in junior high or high school, I wasn’t about to do what they did. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I did math and psychology [in college], and the more I got into both of them, I thought, ‘Well, I think I’m probably wanting to teach them at a college level.’ I got my master’s degree and then I worked two years teaching at a junior college in San Antonio. Then I came back and got my doctorate, and then off we went. I knew the value of it, and I also knew how much enjoyment my parents got out of constantly working with students.

Bergelin: Administration is really interesting because there’s a very clear difference between teaching versus administration at the collegiate level. When was that switch for you?

Turner: It was a difficult decision. When I was talking to my future wife, I told her that I wanted to teach and write, be all the things that a faculty member ends up being. After I got my doctorate, I went to Pepperdine, and they had a division called the social science division, and I taught statistics and psychology. Interestingly enough, at the end of my first year, the chair of that division was made vice president, and so the division chair was open. Much to my surprise, the faculty voted and there were two of us that tied. One of them was a woman that was in psychology also and then myself.

I had two research labs, and she told the guy who was leaving that if she became chair, I couldn’t have those labs. Now, I’m the only faculty member publishing, all of them were just teachers. I went and asked her, ‘Is it true?’ She said, ‘Yes, it is true.’ I went back to the chair and said, ‘Well, y’all brought me here to do some research, publish and do things like that, and I can’t do it if she’s chair.’ He said, ‘Well then, that means you better accept it.’
I got into administration to protect those two labs and became chair of that social science division. Within about two or three years, I changed to associate vice president for the operation of university advancement. I got to work with the president. All of a sudden, he left to be president at the University of Oklahoma, and he asked me to go with him. At age 33, I became vice president for executive affairs. Literally, I got into administration to protect two labs, and then within four years, I’d given them up anyway,

Bergelin: In 30 years, you’re bound to make a lot of different relationships between the students and faculty to trustee members and donors. What is your advice for maintaining really meaningful relationships?

Turner: You have to have some common values. There are things that you’re both interested in, and I have a built-in one, and that is an interest in promoting and developing SMU. Nearly everything I do is related to that. If you’re interested in SMU, I’m your friend.
In these 30 years, I haven’t spent a lot of time with anybody who just totally wasn’t interested in SMU. Here in Dallas, nearly everybody’s interested in SMU. Everybody that goes to church isn’t, but they tolerate it because I’m always going to have my Mustang pin on and usually be wearing a Mustang tie. They just have to put up with it.

Bergelin: What’s a relationship that you’ve made while you’re here at SMU that might surprise some people?

Turner: Ron Kirk became mayor when I got here in 1995, and we both decided that, since we were getting underway together, we would work together. I wanted SMU to be more of Dallas’ university, and he wanted SMU to be more of Dallas’ university. He was mayor for four of those 30 years. We’ve been very good friends, and he will help SMU in some way if we need it, or his wife, Matrice. We’ve played golf together but there’s not a real SMU tie. We’re brought together by a commitment to Dallas.

Bergelin: What do you think about the growth of the football program from the death penalty to the university’s inaugural season in the ACC?

Turner: The death penalty affected everything. When I got here, I was here for the last year of being in the Southwest Conference. Immediately, I had to think, ‘Alright, what’s the future going to be?’ In looking around at other conferences that we might go to, we got in the Western Athletic Conference because they had an opening, but our facilities were just awful, and it was going to be very difficult to get anybody interested.
We didn’t have a football stadium on campus. We were playing at the Cotton Bowl and before that, out of Texas Stadium. That’s just no way to make a student body, not just student athletes, but a student body develop pride in the university. Moody had been going for about 40 years without much of a renovation. There wasn’t a real soccer stadium, it was some bleachers. In tennis, you have to have six courts, we had five.
The first thing we had to do was to get a football stadium here. Fortunately, Nancy Ann and Ray Hunt, Lamar Hunt and Jerry Ford, a lot of people were interested in it. I took a number of them over to Ole Miss and showed them The Grove because I already had The Boulevard identified as being the corollary to that. I showed them what was involved, and everybody got excited about creating it here. Now, whenever an Ole Miss family comes here, because we get a lot of students whose parents went to Ole Miss, they’ll come up and say, ‘I know what you did. You borrowed this from [Ole Miss].’ I say, ‘I made it even better.’ The idea with football was that it had to carry the rest [of the sports], but to do the rest, we needed a lot more enthusiasm about the university. There’s nothing like being on campus at exciting events that makes alumni and friends excited about the university.
To have the facilities and then to get into the ACC, to provide the kind of venue that we should have here at SMU, it’s exciting.

Bergelin: I don’t know if many students would know this, but you played basketball in college.

Turner: In junior college, I did. I agreed to play at Abilene Christian. I wanted to come here, but just wasn’t tall enough or probably good enough either. My sophomore year, they wanted me to go up to Lubbock to learn to be a guard because I’d been a forward in high school. I’d already had one knee surgery from football in high school, and my sophomore year, I did it again. My sophomore year, basically, I was on crutches.

Bergelin: I played volleyball in high school, and I got injured. I was quite accident-prone, so I get it.

Turner: It’s just amazing how the human knee is not made for sports.

Bergelin: As a student-athlete yourself, what is it like watching the success of SMU?

Turner: Since I played football and basketball, I’m going to be interested in those sports. I just grew up with them.
I really enjoyed it last year when the volleyball [game] sold out when we played Nebraska, that was incredibly exciting, too. Neither of my daughters played sports, they were in fine arts. I take a lot of pride in the fact that our fine arts programs are so good, too.

Bergelin: It was great for us [The Daily Campus] to cover it, too. I remember all of our reporters coming back and being excited about covering every football game. I want to take you back to your time as chancellor at Ole Miss. Shortly after you started, you shut down Beta Theta Pi for a racist act, and later met with students and the local NAACP chapter. What was that like?

Turner: One, I’d never been to Mississippi before I interviewed [for the position]. Things had been going downhill there. Their enrollment had dropped by about a third, the chancellor had been sick for a while, and there were a lot of other things, racial things, going on. He said, ‘They need somebody young. I don’t think you’ll get it, but you’ll at least get a chance to interview.’
Gail and I went, and I got the job. Part of the reason was Gail. A couple of these trustees felt like having Gail and I going around the state would be perfect because we were young and we had a first grader and a fifth grader. It would set an entirely different image.
I was surprised at how intense things still were. I’m a Christian, so after a while, you get to thinking, ‘Well, maybe this is what I’m called to do.’ That’s why I stayed over there so long. It’s because I felt like we were doing a lot of things that needed to be done. I hired [Coach Rob Evans]. He and I played together at Lubbock. They needed somebody that wouldn’t cheat and would just lift up school. I said over and over again that the state was not going to develop until there were more Ole Miss rings wrapped around black fingers. He [Evans] was a part of that, too. I have a lot of affection for that place.

Bergelin: It seems like you really moved Ole Miss forward, and it seems like you tried to do the same thing here.

Turner: We got a lot done at Ole Miss. Robert Kay, followed me. Everybody knew him and it [Ole Miss] really took off. They’d never had any fundraisers, they hadn’t had any new buildings in forever because the state couldn’t fund them. We got the federal government to fund five of them. When the SMU opportunity came, the death penalty had put SMU in a ditch. SMU had not had any major fundraising campaigns to completion, and it was in the doldrums. I remember telling Gail, ‘Based on what they need, we know how to do this.’ It was just a matter of getting it going.

Bergelin: Do you feel like you accomplished what you set out to accomplish here at SMU?

Turner: I always wanted to get to SMU. I also knew if I got here, I wasn’t leaving unless I got fired. I got lots of opportunities to leave, but I wouldn’t even go visit. Dallas, when I was growing up, was Mecca. I had aunts and uncles here. You’d come over to the State Fair from your little town, go downtown and all that stuff. It was great. I got where I wanted to be, and I wasn’t going to leave.
The one thing I would never have anticipated was the Bush Library. It’s a huge part of what I feel great about, having helped to bring it here. One of the things that helped was that I was from Texas, and we had had a number of presidents that weren’t. When you’re trying to get momentum going, it was really helpful. We had trustees that were incredible, I mean, just incredible.

Bergelin: How do you feel leaving SMU knowing that there are words like diversity, equity and inclusion that are actively being stripped away from universities, workplaces and federal grants and so much more which could impact so many people.

Turner: There are two parts to your question. One, I’m not going to be president, but I’m going to be president emeritus. I’m going to have an office over in Moody, and I’m going to still be doing a lot of things.
I’m very concerned about what’s going on countrywide right now and all the attacks on universities. We’ve got to work our way through this. A lot of the things Dr. Maria Dixon Hall and I have worked on during the last 10 years together, she and I keep saying to each other and other people, we may have to change what we call something, but we want to make sure that we don’t change what the values are under it, and that is how you treat people, how you value people and those kinds of things. If you call it B rather than A, well then so be it. As long as it doesn’t change how you treat people.
There are some valid criticisms about universities. Any institution that has been around a long time and served a lot of people gets some barnacles along the way. You have to continually modify and make sure whatever you’re living up to is what you say you are. Universities will come out of this. We’ve been around for over a thousand years. It’s the longest-standing institution. There are churches, but most of the churches have changed over time, but universities? Universities endure forever.

Bergelin: You mentioned your transition to president emeritus. Are we going to see a more casual Dr. Turner going into this new position? Are we keeping the suit and tie? I talked to students and I did hear about the Adidas tracksuit.

Turner: [The tracksuit] On the weekends.
Probably a more casual Dr. Turner, that’s true. As president, you never know where you’re going to end up in a day. I always wanted the president of SMU to look better dressed than the average [person]. Now, president emeritus doesn’t have to be so well-dressed, maybe a sport coat and slacks. My view is, you don’t lose when you dress up. The only decision I have to make in the morning is what tie to wear.

Bergelin: As the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Campus, if you ever feel like you need to add something to your agenda, as President Emeritus, we’re taking applications for contributors. You are more than welcome to come write for The Daily Campus.

Turner: Guest editorial?

Bergelin: Yes, you’re more than welcome!