Candace Royer

INTERVIEWER: Today is May 18, 2010. I am Karen Arenson. We're speaking this morning with Candace Royer. She came to MIT in 1981 as head women's tennis coach and assistant director of physical education, and was promoted to director of athletics and head of the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation in 2001. She was the first woman to hold that post at MIT. Five years later she was promoted to senior associate dean for student life. And now, she is associate director of development for athletics. Candace, thank you for speaking with us today.

ROYER: It's a pleasure.

INTERVIEWER: You have noted that over the years you've run into people who said, gee, I didn't know MIT had sports. How important are sports or athletics at MIT?

ROYER: Well, Karen, in my mind they're essential, especially at MIT. The sports programs that we run are not just about varsity sports, but rather about all of the sports that we do: club sports, intramural sports, a wonderful informal recreation program. And as much as giving balance to student life here it also gives our students another place to excel.

INTERVIEWER: And do any of them take advantage of that?

ROYER: Yes, they do. As a matter of fact, we have about 20 percent of the undergraduate population actively involved in our varsity sports programs year in and year out. On the intramural side, approximately 80- 90 percent of our students take part in intramurals at some point in their career. Many of them do intramural sports many times, and many different intramural sports. The Club Sports Program was primarily aimed at the graduate population, but we also welcome faculty, staff, and undergraduate students into that area as well.

INTERVIEWER: Do the women participate in the sports and athletics as much as men?

ROYER: Absolutely. We have the women participating at huge numbers today. In fact, the program since 1981 has grown really in leaps and bounds. We have, I think, at this point in time about 18 women's sports. And they're filled, so it's wonderful.

INTERVIEWER: And do the women come in having done them in high school as much as the men or do they discover them here?

ROYER: You know, that's the biggest change, I think, in the MIT story overall. Our men and our women are coming with high- level high school experiences. And that has created some interesting challenges for the department in the last decade.

INTERVIEWER: Why aren't the sports better known here? In other words, people say, gee, I didn't know MIT had athletics.

ROYER: I think there are a couple of things. First, is the academic reputation of this institution, which I think, overshadows everything else, and rightfully so. But we're also a Division III sport institution. And characteristically around the country, Division III sports do not get the note that Division IA sports receive. Primarily, we're here for the students. It's participation- based. That doesn't mean it's not about excellence as well, but it is participation- based unlike Division IA sports, which it has a high entertainment component to it.

INTERVIEWER: For many students in high school sports are the thing they go after. For MIT students many of them have devoted themselves to science labs, which take lots of hours. Have they had the time to specialize in sports the way non- MIT students have?

ROYER: I think the best answer to that is that about 52 percent of the students we're now admitting to MIT have had a high- level high school experience. Which means that they might have achieved at the regional or state or national level as a high school athlete. So they're learning in high school how to parse their time, how to manage their time, and they're doing both well. So they're pursuing very high- level academics in high school, but they're also achieving in music and art and sports as well.

INTERVIEWER: Do the sports they come in with tend to be the same mix of sports at other colleges or do they specialize in different ones?

ROYER: That's a great question. We offer, even today, 33 sports to our students on the varsity side. And some of those sports are unheard of in most high schools. A sport like crew, for example, or pistol or rifle aren't normally included in the high school sports program. So we have students still coming to MIT without a sport experience, who take a physical education class in pistol. And in one instance, I can remember a fellow achieving national level prominence after starting as a physical education student.

INTERVIEWER: What led to your coming to MIT? Were you recruited?

ROYER: That's another great question. I was recruited actually. The director of athletics at the time was a gentleman whose name was Royce Flippen. And he was part of one of the most famous backfields at Princeton University, so he was well-versed in athletics. He'd done many different things, I think, before coming here as director of athletics. He was probably one of the reasons I came. He explained to me during my interview process that if I came to MIT rather than going to Duke or Rice or some of the other schools, who were also recruiting me at the time that this would be a life-long career experience for me. And he was right.

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember your first impressions when you got here?

ROYER: Yes, I do. And I have maybe a funny story that I should relate to you. It's something that I don't think is written down anywhere, but it's certainly etched in my mind. First of all, there was a huge difference between coaching at the Division I level when I came to MIT to coach Division III athletes. I want to mention in that same breath that that abyss has narrowed considerably. When you go out to watch an MIT event today, whether it's women's basketball, men's basketball, rowing, whatever it is that you're watching, you're going to see our athletes performing at a much higher level than ever before. But when I came on to the scene we had a very small women's tennis team, and I would say that most of the students were really there for exercise rather than for excellence. So it took me probably four or five years to instill in the students minds and hearts that they could do both. They could get good exercise, but they could also pursue excellence in their sport.

The funny story is my first trip across the river to play Simmons College. I remember getting into the van, closing the doors, having everybody be absolutely silent. Now I can tell you, at Penn State University that wasn't typical. I'd get into the van and the first thing someone would say to me is, Coach, tunes. Which meant I should turn on the radio. So that was the first difference that I noted.

The second was I was driving across to the FENS and I was hearing this sound. Zip, zip, zip. And I heard it repeatedly. Finally, I pulled the van aside off the road and I turned back only to see three or four of the students unzipping their little calculator cases so that they could do a problem set on the way between here and the FENS. I was stunned. But I realized that this is MIT. And that particular quality, I think, pervaded all of our trips. Every time we were in the van going somewhere, the MIT student was busy trying to get something done. It was great.

INTERVIEWER: And even after you got them to focus more on tennis and raise the bar there they were still doing homework on the way to--

ROYER: Even so. Even so. I remember being at many New England Championships and one of the jobs of the tournament director is to find the students who are coming up next. So the on-deck students for the next match. People always knew where to find my students. They were in the van, usually working on a problem set. It was never a problem.

INTERVIEWER: So what did it take to make it a more excellent team? Did they have to put in 20 hours a week of practice or was it something else?

ROYER: Well, as you probably know, 20 hours a week of practice at MIT would not be possible. So we had to do it within the block of time that was afforded to us. And that's the 5:00 to 7:00 hour each day. So we had basically two hours and because tennis is an individual sport, I had a huge advantage. I was able to be there for students when they could be there. So I think part of what began to shift in the minds of our students at that time was that I was there for them. They weren't just there to represent MIT, but I was there for them to help them get better and achieve the goals that they would set for themselves. So I think that was a major part of it-- my availability, the interest that I had in doing private lessons with students so that they could actually get better quicker.

INTERVIEWER: So if you had known and understood this before you made your decision to come, do you think you would have come?

ROYER: Well, yes. I think I knew what I was getting into because my first question when I got the call from MIT about coaching women's tennis here was, are there women at MIT? And then, my second question was, are there sports at MIT? I just really didn't even know that there was a women's population here sufficient to field teams. And I think honestly, at that time we were only about 18 percent women in 1981. In that range, I believe.

INTERVIEWER: Which was way up from what is had been a decade earlier.

ROYER: That's exactly right.

INTERVIEWER: So the growth in the women's population in the following decade probably helped you field better teams too?

ROYER: Enormously. I think as we started admitting more women we did see a decrement in the number of qualified male participants that we might expect to come. But it really built the Women's Sports Program. I remember trying to start a women's squash team in 1982 or 1983. And quite frankly, there just weren't enough women to really interest them in squash at that time. We now have women playing as part of our Men's Squash Program. So it's really great. Squash and golf and some of the other sports actually can be run as coed sports.

INTERVIEWER: And if they're run as coed sports do the women compete against men at other colleges?

ROYER: Yes they do. And successfully.

INTERVIEWER: Really?

ROYER: Yes, successfully.

INTERVIEWER: You don't have to have a certain amount of strength to be successful in some of those sports?

ROYER: In some of the sports, for example, in squash it's really more about positioning and depth than it is about power. Power can help you, but you can do an awful lot with finesse and endurance. A sport like rifle, which is a coed sport here, sailing, you can compete very effectively as a woman on those teams.

INTERVIEWER: What are the dynamics of coed teams versus single sex teams?

ROYER: Quite frankly, I think it's great. I think students meet each other, they have a different relationship right from the very first. They get to know each other; they become good friends. And some of them actually do end up dating.

INTERVIEWER: What are the dynamics like for coed teams? Are they very different from all women or all men?

ROYER: They're probably different dynamics, but I think they're very positive and healthy ones. I think students who participate on coed teams really get to know the other gender much more as friends, as fellow compatriots. I think there's a real richness to that experience. In fact, one of the things that I tried to talk with my coaches about when I was department head director of athletics is that we should try to create a Men's and Women's Basketball Program. Not have a men's team and a women's team that are totally separate, but rather have fond experiences for them where they can interact and really learn from each other. And I think that's been fostered nicely at MIT. I find the teams working very well together.

INTERVIEWER: Are there women cheerleaders?

ROYER: There are. And there are men cheerleaders.

INTERVIEWER: And men cheerleaders.

ROYER: And men cheerleaders. In fact, that's an interesting story, Karen, because we to this point in time have not really sponsored the cheerleading squad the way that one would expect it be sponsored at a Division I-A institution. We don't provide them with a lot of money or travel, but they take it upon themselves to make sure that the cheerleading is at a very high quality level. In fact, that's one of the things that I've seen change enormously in the last decade. They're very professional, they're coached, and they're funded basically by the Club Sports Program itself. So they're a club sport if you will at MIT.

INTERVIEWER: Let's go back and talk about your own development and how you got into tennis. Were you very athletic as a child?

ROYER: I rode and trained horses as a child. So from the time I was nine until I was about 20, riding was really my primary sport. So was I athletic? I think yes, and in many ways, but you know, we're talking about pre- Title IX days. So there weren't very many opportunities for women in small town America when I was coming through junior high school and high school. So I was fortunate my father had a farm background. He loved horses and he was willing to consider buying me my first horse, which then became one of too many, probably over the course of that 10 years, 11- year period. But at any rate, I did a little bit in physical education classes. I learned to be a high jumper. And then when I began my matriculation at Penn State University, I took an introductory level physical education tennis class. And that's what really turned me on to the sport of tennis. I then took more classes in sequence. I changed from being a psychology major to a physical education major. I really focused on tennis and started to play on the team as a sophomore at Penn State main campus university--

INTERVIEWER: On the varsity team?

ROYER: On the varsity team. But again, remember, this was pre Title IX, so the available talent was not very deep. You might have a good number one and two player and then it dropped off precipitously after that. So I was kept as the twelfth woman on a 12- woman team and worked my way up into the number 6 singles spot by the time I graduated from Penn State.

INTERVIEWER: How much time did you practice and did you spend summers doing it?

ROYER: Probably too much practicing. Now I practiced a lot. We were fortunate. We had an indoor tennis facility at Penn State at that time, so any free time I had, other members of the team and I would go out and hit. I learned a tremendous amount. And then probably, the tennis life-changing experience for me was becoming a counselor at the Chase Tennis Center at the Westtown Quaker School just outside of Philadelphia. Those two summers, probably I learned more than I could have in 10 or 15 years of sort of muddling about on my own. Ed Faulkner was the teaching professional there and he had coached many of our Davis Cup Teams. All the way back to the time when Bill Tilden was a famous player. So it was a really good teaching- learning experience for me.

INTERVIEWER: What about tennis grabbed you so much?

ROYER: I think I first loved this feeling of hitting a tennis ball, being able to sort of control the ball and understand the-- I won't say the physics of it, but sort of the nature of how you impart spin to the ball. I loved that feeling. I also really loved the quality of the people that I got to know through that sport. It was great fun. The competition, you know, your opponents across the net from you. And at the beginning of the match you would chat, at the end of the match you would sincerely congratulate each other. It just seemed like the right way to play sports, and I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

INTERVIEWER: Had you done the horseback riding competitively?

ROYER: I had. I had. I showed to the state level, so it was a wonderful experience through the 4-H clubs of America, actually, it was the conduit to the state level. It really took my life for I think I said 11 years that I participated in riding. But we also raised horses. So I got to know a lot about animal husbandry and we raised appaloosas and quarter horses.

INTERVIEWER: Was that your father's full-time or your mother's full-time job or did they do other things too?

ROYER: It was my father's full-time job after he retired from his full-time job.

INTERVIEWER: Which was?

ROYER: He had several businesses. The last one, the one that I remember the best is a sporting goods store. But mostly around fly fishing and hunting. It wasn't the soccer ball kind of sporting goods store, but rather really, highly focused on what men particularly, in central Pennsylvania are focused on in their avocations, which is hunting and fishing.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have sisters or brothers, and were they athletic?

ROYER: I had a brother who was much, much older than I. So by the time I came along he was serving our country in Korea. He went back and served during Vietnam, and he came back to a police job in the little town of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Where ultimately he became chief of police. He was not athletic at all, but he really enjoyed watching sports and he totally enjoyed hunting and fishing. INTERVIEWER: And did your father get into the horses because of you or did you get into them because of him?

ROYER: Oh, he would remind me if he were alive today that he definitely got into it because of me. You know, that first horse, that first riding experience led us down that whole road of eventually training and racing horses. It's a very expensive hobby.

INTERVIEWER: At Penn State, when you started getting interested in tennis, the coaches and the phys. ed. department were willing to accommodate you and help you? Or did you have to do it on your own?

ROYER: Another wonderful question. Back in that day, women sport coaches were usually not paid. They did it because they loved their sport and they wanted to instill in others the love of that sport. So yes, I'd have to say they were more than accommodating. They were encouraging. They did anything they could to make sure that you had good experiences. I'll give you an example.

When we first started, I think this was probably 1970. Many, many times the women who coached would actually pay for our trips out of their own pocket. So not only were they not paid, they were actually spending money to make sure that we had a sport experience. Extraordinary group of women, pioneering women who really laid the foundation for women's sports today.

INTERVIEWER: And you were talking about how much you learned during your summer experiences. What kinds of things did you learn?

ROYER: You know, one of the first things I learned was that you really have to guide people in your teaching rather than sort of command them. It was interesting. I really thought when I first began teaching at the Chase Center that the students would just take everything that I had to tell them and they'd do it immediately, and they wouldn't question me. And I found very quickly that that was not the case, and it was a lesson that has served me well throughout my teaching career. To be able to explain why you're asking someone to do something a certain way rather than just direct them to do something a certain way. That served me especially well at MIT because as you know Karen, people at MIT question and are curious and challenge. And quite frankly, had I not had that experience early on I'm not sure how I would have responded. But it was exactly what I came to expect, and actually, enjoy about coaching.

INTERVIEWER: What made you choose Penn State as the college you attended?

ROYER: There was no choice. My father grew up about 14 miles from State College Pennsylvania and so when I became I think, a sophomore in high school, my parents started talking to me a little bit about college. And about my junior year-- I'm going to digress for just a moment. My mother asked me where I was going to go and I said, well, actually Mother I was hoping to talk to you and Dad about sending me to England because I'd really like to take the horse masters class in England. And then, become a professional rider and trainer. And my mother, I can still see her-- without a breath she said, well, I'll tell you what, we'll do that after you have a four-year degree from the institution that you choose. And I thought, well, that's a pretty good deal. So I'll spend four years in college and then I'll get to do what I really want to do.

Well, the rest is history. I chose Penn State University. My father was a huge proponent of my going there because it was close, it was nearby, but also because it was the one school that he had heard of. My father was eighth grade educated. He grew up on a farm in central Pennsylvania, so he didn't have a deep knowledge of Harvard, Princeton Yale, and other institutions, but he knew Penn State. He'd sent to me there a couple of summers as part of a 4-H program to learn about animal husbandry and other related topics to horses. And so, it was pretty clear to me that that was the school that I would be attending.

INTERVIEWER: And you said that when you initially enrolled you had been thinking about psychology. Did you expect to have a career and what did you have in mind?

ROYER: I probably have the first issue of Psychology Today still somewhere in my home. I just was fascinated by the concept. And here again, that was something that I minored in with my master's degree in psychology of sport. It's something that served me very well as a coach, and pretty well as a teacher as well.

INTERVIEWER: When did you start thinking about staying in sports and athletics as a career? And, what did your parents think about that idea?

ROYER: My father passed away about four months after I graduated from Penn State. So Dad probably would not have thought that was the best idea. I remember him saying to me at one point in time when he learned that I was going to major in physical education that he was worried that I'd be able to support myself as a physical education major. My mother though, was very supportive and when I decided to become a tennis teaching professional, which is what I did for almost five years after graduating from Penn State, she supported that. And she went with me on the interview and sort of stood by while I went through that experience. And even though I wasn't making as much money as I could have made had I accepted a teaching job, which I had an offer on the table, she said, you know, you really should follow what you want to do. And I said, Mother, I really think I want to dedicate my life to tennis. I love teaching tennis. I loved the soft skills that you can teach, as well as the hard skills-- the biomechanics of sport. But I said, I really just love the sport and I'd like to pursue this. So she supported it and me, actually, for a couple of years until I got a really good job in the Philadelphia area teaching at one of the [INAUDIBLE] there.

INTERVIEWER: So you didn't simply stay at Penn State all those years?

ROYER: No, that's right. I left Penn State. I graduate in 1971. In 1972 I went back to the tennis camp, and that fall I started as an assistant teaching professional at the Garden Fair Racquet Club just outside of Philly.

INTERVIEWER: At some point you did go back to school for a Master's? How did that develop? How did those intervening years work out?

ROYER: Well, as I said, I taught tennis full-time and that was about 40 hours a week plus at an indoor racquet club-- indoor/outdoor racquet club in Philadelphia. And after about five years of that I thought, you know, where my heart really is working with students. I was part of the Philadelphia Gold Cup Program, which was a program that we ran for underserved students in the Philadelphia area. We started teaching them at 6 o'clock-- 5:30 or 6 o'clock in the morning on Saturday mornings. Had them for about two hours. And through volunteering time in that program I realized that I really wanted to work with young people. So the only root for me at that time back into the college ranks of coaching and teaching was through a Master's degree. So I started my Master's degree program at Penn State University in 1976. I assisted my former coach there for a year. She decided to retire and Penn State decided to hire me as their head women's tennis coach.

INTERVIEWER: So you were juggling both the full-time coaching job and your work on your Master's degree?

ROYER: Sometimes I look back on those days and wonder how I got it all done, but I did. I really enjoyed the coaching tremendously. But I was teaching in the Department of Physical Education six days a week at that time. We had classes on Saturday morning. So anytime I traveled with the team, which was about every other weekend, I was doing lesson plans for half a dozen or more classes. That was probably the greatest challenge, is getting someone else prepared to teach your class rather than being able to teach it yourself.

INTERVIEWER: How good was the Penn State women's tennis team while you were coaching it?

ROYER: How do I answer that humbly? We were very good. In fact, I had a reunion with several of my players just this past fall. I haven't seen some of these women in almost 30 years. And we were reminiscing about how wonderful it was to get out of the van, arriving at our venue for competition, and really (a) feeling like team and (b) feeling really, really confident about our ability. We achieved great success. We competed mostly against the Ivy League schools because frankly, the state schools in Pennsylvania were not strong enough. I think we maybe had one or two matches a year against state schools and everything else was at least four and a half hours away.

INTERVIEWER: Talk about your Master's degree topic. It seems like it was very analytical, something that sort of fits neatly into an MIT- type of framework.

ROYER: That's a very good comment, and I think it does. In fact, I was really happy to have had the experience of looking at the tennis serve at 500 frames per second. To be able to really analyze what's happening when you hit a tennis serve. I was really privileged and honored to be able to do this study at Penn State because back at that time we were doing very basic analyses in motor learning. So my advisor, Bob Christina really took a chance on me to allow me to do something that turned out to be much more of an applied study. So yes, looking at the tennis serve to basically understand where the power segment is in the serve was enlightening because we found some things out that we didn't know before.

INTERVIEWER: What did you find?

ROYER: Well, the basic power comes primarily from the legs. And we really thought there was a time at the tennis serve when you snapped the wrist into the serve where a lot of power is supplied. As it turns out, that's a transfer. It's a bridge, and it has to be there. But the real power, like in golf, comes from the legs and the turn. And if you lack either of those things you're not going to make it up by snapping your puny little wrist into the serve.

INTERVIEWER: How much science did you have to have to be able to conclude that?

ROYER: Quite a lot. And you know, I'd love to see that study replicated because now Bob Christina said to me, you're kind of doing this before your time. In other words, we didn't have a three-dimensional motion analyzer camera at that time. So I had to approximate the points that I was analyzing. My data was lost three times, so I had to go back through all that film three different times on a PDP-11 computer. Some people around here might remember what those are, but everything was done on cards so all of my analyses was done on computer cards, punch cards, which we had to punch ourselves back in the day. It was quite laborious, but I learned a tremendous amount about myself in terms of perseverance. And I also learned a lot about biomechanics, as well as motor learning.

INTERVIEWER: How did you come up with that as your topic in what you wanted to pursue? And did you know that it was going to be doable?

ROYER: The serve had always fascinated me. I had trouble learning the serve because I started so late to play tennis; I was 18 when I started to play. And it was always problematic for me. So I thought, if I get a chance to analyze it, I'd really like to do that. Plus, I'd had those five years of watching, particularly women have great difficulty learning to serve because they're throwing motions were so undeveloped. And so again, I thought if I can break this down and really understand it maybe I can teach it better. So that's where the motivation was.

INTERVIEWER: Did your serving get better after?

ROYER: Yes, it did. I'm a much better tennis player now, even at my age then I was in college. I learned a lot through teaching and through coaching. And I think that's what happens. You analyze so much that you learn to self-analyze pretty well and improve your own game.

INTERVIEWER: Were you able to translate what you had learned in your Master's thesis into teaching your team or coaching them into being much better servers?

ROYER: I like to think so, although I have one student who will call me from time to time and say, you know, coach, I'm still having trouble with the serve. It's better, but I'm still having trouble with the serve. But I think primarily in my classes, as well as when I was engaged in coaching, yes, it was a stroke that I felt very, very comfortable teaching and breaking down.

INTERVIEWER: As technology has grown better have there been other studies of tennis serves that you've come across or is it kind of an unexplored area?

ROYER: You know, there's a lot of film and there's a lot of analysis, but I don't know that anyone has ever undertaken such an in-depth analysis as I did of the serve around the same investigation. You know, looking at the segments of movement and trying to discern where those differences in power might come from. But I really don't know. I haven't studied the literature in recent years very closely.

INTERVIEWER: Given the time you had spent in Pennsylvania growing up and working there, and given the experience you had coaching the women's tennis team at Penn State, what prompted you to be ready to move?

ROYER: To make that switch? There are a couple of things. First, I mentioned Royce, and I thought that he did a wonderful job during my interview process here. I also had lived in central Pennsylvania my whole life. So I thought it would be nice to live somewhere else. When Duke called me I thought, well, that's the south I don't know much about the south, but I'll go down and interview there. And then when I got the call from MIT I thought, well, the New England states have always been of interest. It's a beautiful place, particularly in the fall of the year. So I was ready to make a move. But there was something else that kind of spurred me to look outside of Penn State, and that was that at that point-- so this was 1980. Penn State decided to remove scholarships from some of the programs. So the non-- what should I say? The Division I programs that were not televised, that were not football, basketball, and hockey. So I decided that it would be very challenging for me to build the team that I thought I could build there without any scholarship aid at all. So feeding that into all of my decision-making sort of made me think that this was a good time for me to move on.

INTERVIEWER: And yet, you probably could've moved to a college or university that did give athletic scholarships. But in the end you came to one that doesn't.

ROYER: I did. Again, that decision-making was more around a career choice. I always wanted to think about teaching and being an educator rather than just coaching. So had I gone to Duke University I would have been a Division I-A tennis coach. I would have done a lot of camps during the year to attract the best students to that campus. I would've had scholarships, and I'm fairly confident that we would have had a very competent program there. Certainly people went on to prove me right about that, Duke University has been among the top 20 schools in the country for a long time in Division I-A tennis. But MIT was different, and you could feel it when you were on this campus. After the first couple of years I really knew I'd made the right choice for me because of the quality of the student more than the quality of the student athlete. It's great fun to teach at MIT.

INTERVIEWER: Did the Title IX changes mean much for MIT? Can you talk a little about what that was about and how that applied here, if at all?

ROYER: I think Title IX did have an effect at MIT. I've talked to some people who were here in the 70s and the 60s who really struggled to find outlets for their athletic abilities. And I think if you interview some of the people of those decades you would hear some stories about that. So I think Title IX really did help, although by the time Royce Flippen arrived on the scene, and I think that was probably-- oh gosh, probably 1980. I think he was only here a year before I arrived on the scene-- some very good things had happened for women. Some of the teams had been developed. They were not at a very high- level to begin with, but that's pretty normal. But over the years we certainly have invested I think, as much in our Women's Sports Program as we have in our men. And that has been a point of pride for us in the department for a very long time.

INTERVIEWER: Has MIT changed much since you first arrived?

ROYER: I think so. I really do. I think the sort of student who applies here now is also applying to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford. I think we attracted a different population 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. But it seems that we're admitting many more students who have what we call a well-rounded background. So they're experts in something other than math, science, and physics. And I think it's made the campus-- it's normalized the campus in many ways. The emphasis is still there on high-level academics for sure. The students are still very challenged and that's what they come here for and I don't think our professors disappoint them in any way. But they want something more, Karen. They really want to pursue these other avocations if you will or outlets to a very high- level.

In fact, I should tell you this. Our women's tennis coach currently played for me in the 90s, went on to get a second degree at MIT so that she could finish her athletic career here, and then went on to get a master's degree in psychology of sport. And she returned under the time that I was here as director of athletics. She returned as an assistant coach, and within a year or two I was able to offer her a full-time position, my old position essentially as head coach. And she's here today.

INTERVIEWER: Was this somebody who had played tennis before she got to MIT or did she, like you, start when she got to college?

ROYER: She played on a men's team, a boy's team in high school. I have to say, she took one of my early tennis classes or she took a tennis class of mine early in her career here and I saw tremendous ability. But she needed a lot of work in terms of her stroke development. And so I offered to have her come out for the team in the fall of her sophomore year, which she did. And the rest, as they say, is history. She became my number one player. And she, today, is an excellent tennis player and she's an even better coach.

INTERVIEWER: Does MIT do any kind of athletic recruiting? Can it do anything to bring in strong athletes so that you're starting with raw material that's up a level?

ROYER: That has changed also. I think in the last decade or more. We now have coaches who are very astute at developing pipelines for the right students. Now I want to say it that way. I want to underscore that because obviously it wouldn't do us much good to go to tennis competitions and find out if our students can do math well. But it does serve us well to work with high school coaches who understand the kind of student that we're looking for and who can send us the students who can not only survive but flourish at MIT academically. And also, who are high-level athletes. And we're seeing that more and more.

Our women's volleyball team almost doesn't have to hold tryouts anymore. And that's for me, an old line physical educator as I am, is good news, bad news. The good news is that he has a highly developed pipeline of students supplying because of the quality of that program. The bad news might be that students don't have an opportunity to start to play something that they would really learn to love and perhaps have opportunities to become good at. However, that said, we still do have the Club Sport System. So students can have an awfully high- level experience in our club sports today as well.

INTERVIEWER: Does MIT give any preference to good athletes if they can also do the math and the science?

ROYER: I'll tell you how I think it's working at this point in time. Our coaches are able to put something into the file that identifies the student as someone who they believe are qualified academically. That's first. And secondly, as a student athlete who would make a difference on their team. What happens behind the doors of admissions beyond that I don't really know. But I have seen the shape of the class change, and I think that we probably admit as many high-level musicians and artists as we do athletes.

INTERVIEWER: Because it's interesting, MIT's director of admissions at the moment, not only was an ardent athlete-- I guess he was a rower when he was a student here, but he actually worked as a coach and teacher in the Department of Athletics before moving into admissions. Do you think that gives him any kind of extra sensitivity or interest?

ROYER: First of all, Karen, I want to say he was not a plant from the athletics department. Stu earned that position solely on his merit. But I think Stu does get it. He certainly has coached many, many student athletes through one of the toughest sports here, which is the rowing. Rowing exacts much more time, I think, than many of the other sports. They're up early, they're on the water. The season is very long. It's still going on as a matter of fact, I believe, at this point in time. But Stu understands the complete picture. He understands what it takes to be successful here academically. He also understands that athletics can feed into that success in a really beautiful symbiotic way. I like to think that Stu is good for athletics, but I also think that Su is good for MIT, and he's certainly good for shaping the class in a well-rounded way.

INTERVIEWER: Besides coaching tennis, you had responsibility for phys. ed. classes and the Phys. Ed. Program. Tell us about the program and about MIT's phys. ed and swimming requirements.

ROYER: I love our physical education program. It, for me, is one of the best physical education programs in the country because of the breadth, but also the depth. So the breadth is about all of the different activities we offer. The depth is about having physical educators who are also our head coaches. So they understand the sport skills that they're teaching at a very, very deep level. I think it's a great advantage.

Many, many institutions don't have a physical education requirement any longer, and if they do they often hire outside people to teach those classes. I don't want to denigrate that experience but I do think there's a certain richness in having someone who is coaching high-level athletes to national prominence teaching in a physical education class and a basic skills class in what they can give to the MIT student who's just trying to fulfill their physical education requirement. I also think the students have a better time today because we do have so much breadth. So you could take 801S, the Physics of Sport, using scuba diving to understand better fluid mechanics. So there's a really wonderful relationship between the academic side of the house and the athletic side of the house in a course such as 801S.

We also have a Ski Program now. We have actually for many years, we've augmented that with an outdoor education program. We do that over a weekend in the fall. What is it? The Veterans' Day holiday I think. We take students north and we have them understand orienteering. And, if there's snow at that time, snow camping. It's just a great opportunity to have students see the beautiful area that they're in and learn skills that can serve them for a lifetime.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have coaches who simply don't want to be bothered with teaching phys. ed. and therefore, either not come or leave or kind of moan and whine about it?

ROYER: Oh, I can't sit here and say that there never has been any whining about it, but it's mostly about the time commitment. You know, when you're a coach and you really want to focus on having your students be all that they can be, and have them be competitive in the various leagues in which we participate, there's never enough time. There's never enough time. So it's mostly about the time. Once they get to class they enjoy it very much. But I think there are days when some of the coaches would say, gee, I wish I really didn't have to leave what I'm doing on the coaching side to go teach a physical education class. Yet and still, they are faculty coaches. And so, one of the things that attracted me to MIT was this notion that I could become a tenured faculty member at MIT in physical education. I mean what can be better than that?

So, it was very attractive. It's something that I've worked very hard as formerly as department head to maintain that close connection to our academic faculty, so that students really do see us in an academic way as well as in a highly qualified sport coach environment.

INTERVIEWER: How many students make it to senior year or to the weeks before graduation without having completed their phys. ed. requirement or the swimming? And what happens then?

ROYER: When I was the director of physical education I would have answered that question very simply by saying, too many. But I think we are doing a much better job today of making sure that students are not taking the swim test on the morning of commencement. And that there were instances of that, I think, 20 or 30 years ago. But Carrie Sampson Moore, who's our present director of physical education does a superb job of attracting students into the pool as freshman, and then, throughout the year providing testing opportunities for students. We even have gone. I think, the direction of providing single gender swim opportunities because we have a lot of students who religiously cannot be in the pool with the opposite gender. So that is all a much more clear and complete package. So I don't think we have more than maybe 50 or 60 students now at the end of their senior year without the swim requirement taken.

INTERVIEWER: And most of them somehow get through it in the last couple days or are they simply ushered through and people sort of say, ugh, okay.

ROYER: No. No one is ushered through. In fact the academic side of the house really supports us in this. The physical education requirement is a General Institute Requirement, and it's treated exactly as the other GIR's. So leading up to commencement, leading up to senior year, we have put many, many things in place to remind the students, and to have them enroll in the class so that they don't end up in their senior year, last semester, having to take five physical education classes. The idea, and what we've tried to implement, is a system that front-end loads this, so that students have an opportunity when they're not under the pressure of graduation to really enjoy physical education classes. And maybe develop some skills that they'll pursue throughout their MIT career. So there are little safeguards along the way now, reminders that come from actually the senior associate dean for undergraduate education. That if they don't fulfill the requirement by thus and such there are fines that will be implemented and that kind of thing. They're small, but they're reminders that we want to keep you moving through the program.

INTERVIEWER: As you mentioned, many other colleges including for example, Princeton and Harvard have abandoned phys. ed. and swimming requirements. But in all the discussion about institute requirements in recent years, I don't recall hearing any about the phys. ed. and the swimming. Is there any debate within MIT about whether these requirements ought to continue to exist?