The enduring mission of the Tobias Center is inspiring leadership excellence on a national scale. Special access to the Center’s work will be furnished to Indiana citizens for the distinct purpose of enhancing leadership within the state.
The support of high quality academic research is a central mission of the Tobias Center. The Oral History Program is one of the Center’s major research initiatives.
Important leaders of our time from business, government, not-for-profit, and other sectors serve as narrators for this project. Interviews for the program are conducted by the highest standards prescribed by the American Oral History Association.
The project is particularly interested in examining key turning points in leaders’ careers that are often times of crisis, and in learning what key decisions they had to make and why they made them. In addition to each narrator’s personal story, there are twenty-four questions leadership questions embedded in each interview. As a significant number of such narratives are collected, they will become resourced for research on leadership issues and can be examined for commonalities and differences.
Phil Scarpino, past chair of the English Department and expert in Oral History is Director of this project. A partial list of the Tobias Center’s Oral History narrators is as follows:
John Mutz, former Lieutenant Governor of the State of Indiana (1981-89)
Otis Bowen, former Governor of the State of Indiana (1973-1981)
Myles Brand, the 16th President of Indiana University (1994-2002), current President of NCAA
William Mays, founder, President & Chief Executive Officer of Mays Chemical Company, Inc.
Thomas Ehrlich, the 15th President of Indiana University (1987-1994), and Senior Scholar, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Congressman Lee Hamilton, retired Indiana Congressman (1965-1999), President & Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Foundation
The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame (1952-1987)
James Danforth Quayle, 44th Vice President of the United States (1989-1993)
James T. "Jim" Morris, former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, current President of Pacers Sports and Entertainment
Patricia Miller, Co-founder of Vera Bradley
Sallie Rowland, Co-founder and Retired President and CEO of Rowland Design
These archives will be available in audio or transcribed text format through the Tobias Center website and the Indiana University Library.
