UVU Awards of Excellence 2012 Transcript

UVU: Awards in Excellence 2012 – J. Bonner Ritchie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naGieTYwQWI&t=2484s
[Matthew Holland, President, Utah Valley University]: Well, we'll now move to our final Presidential Award of Excellence winner, J. Bonner Ritchie. I was a point of personal privilege I took to reverse the order so that we could end with Dr. Ritchie who's impact, it's hard for me to explain both institutionally and personally. Dr. Ritchie is internationally respected for his academic work in organizational behavior. In addition to this academic work, he's recognized for a very human and real contribution in terms of mediating peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, and has served as a management consultant to some of the largest organizations in the world and some of our most significant CEOs. In 2001, he came out of retirement to become a scholar in residence at UVU, just at the time we needed critical help with our business school and the march towards university status, and his fingerprints are all over those contributions.
On a more personal note, I have to say that Bonner has been my teacher and given my life's choices and career, there's no higher compliment I think I could pay to a human being. There's no way for me to fully convey my appreciation to him, the role he's had on my life as a thinker, as a writer, as a leader, as a citizen, a contributor, a member of civic and church groups, his influences is everywhere in my life. And so, I'll invite him to come forward and I know what doing here, but I may regret it. I'm going to actually let him take the mic afterwards so everyone prepare themselves!
[Norm Wright, Dean, Woodbury School of Business]: Almost as far back as I can remember, I have recollections of my father, speaking of someone named Bonner Ritchie in almost reverential tones. He was full of admiration for the work that Bonner was doing in making holistic sense of a tough situation in the Middle East. Later in life, I had the privilege of getting to know Bonner personally, first as an admiring college student, and later as a colleague and friend. I've come to better understand my father's admiration for Bonner [. . .] through this nomination. Professor Riche has been serving as the Distinguished Professor in the Woodbury School of Business. He is also Professor Emeritus of International Organizational Behavior at the Romney Institute of Public Management, Marriott School of Management, at BYU. Receiving his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, he served on the faculty of the University of Michigan from 1967 to 1973, and on the BYU faculty from 1973 to 2000. Professor Ritchie has had visiting appointments at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, Birzeit University in Palestine, the University of Jordan, and the University of Southern Europe.
During the 1989 to 90 year, he was a visiting scholar at BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies where he began a lifelong labor of love promoting peace in the Middle East. In addition to being a peacemaker, Bonner is a great teacher. Not a week goes by that I do not hear from somebody speaking of how they were influenced by Bonner's teaching. At Brigham Young University, he was named Honors Professor of the Year twice, received the Exxon Teaching Excellence Award, and was given the Maeser Distinguished Teaching Award. In the Marriott School of Management he received the Outstanding Faculty Award and the William G. Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award. Professor Ritchie's Consulting Management programs and publications are in the areas of leadership development, conflict resolution, managerial decision-making, international
management, economic development, organizational philosophy, and ethics. He has conducted management development programs at the University of Michigan, the University of California, Stanford University, and BYU.
Professor Ritchie has worked with many public, private, and volunteer organizations such as General Motors, AT&T, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, Exxon, Enron, General Food, Citibank, the Arab Bank Banking Corporation, The Department of Defense, The Navajo Tribal Council, Shell Canada, the Canadian Hospital Association, Save the Children Foundation, Hewlett Packard, the Southern Federation of Cooperatives, the Royal Bank of Canada, and The State of Utah. Most recently, his efforts have focused on working with The Palestinian Authority on developing an effective working government in the West Bank and Gaza with universities in Palestine and Jordan, with the governments of Jordan and Egypt, and on The Middle East Peace Process. Upon retiring from Brigham Young University, Dr. Ritchie found one more way in which he could give back to his community. Starting in 2001, he joined UVSC to help guide the institution on its path to becoming a university.
Over the past 11 years, he has served as a Scholar in Residence and as the Interim Dean of the Business School. During that time, he has played a key role in strengthening the business faculty, advising presidents of the university, and serving as a public face for the serious nature of our institution. In playing these roles, Bonner has provided sound advice based on experience and study, while also allowing colleagues, deans and presidents the room they needed to grow and govern in their responsibilities. For a lifetime of distinguished service in pursuit of creating more effective relationships between people and their organizations, and in particular for his magnificent service to our fledgling university, I congratulate Dr. Bonner Ritchie on this award. You are every bit the man my father told me you were.
[Matthew Holland, President, Utah Valley University]: I failed to mention that this category is for lifetime service and it's truly lifetime service to this institution and to education in general. And as I said, it may be against my better judgment, I'm going to let him take the podium here. The other day, he was being referred to as Dr. Ritchie by someone and someone listening said, “well, you're not a doctor.” And his granddaughter said, “yes, you're a doctor of words.” So if you can limit this to 500 or less, which may be impossible, but I thought it would be appropriate to have him do this, not only as the reflection on a lifetime of service, and a kind of summing up statement of sorts, but it's his last semester teaching at UVU. And it's just hard, frankly, to even think about Bonner Ritchie not teaching, that's like Scotland without rain, or Big Macs without Special Sauce. It just doesn't seem to compute, and yet that's where he finds himself. And so, with that, I'd love to have him take just a few words to share with us tonight.
[Dr. J. Bonner Ritchie:] As the senior recipient of awards tonight, let me thank the Trustees, and President's Office, and all of you. You for honoring us with their acknowledgement attempts to make a difference. I'm deeply honored and appreciative of this honor. I was thinking as Ian was here, and Matt, if Ian and Matt had just listened a little more carefully in class, they would've amounted to something! [Laughter] I saw hope in these guys, and they've done reasonably well. [Laughter] But I just think, what more could we have done here? [Laughter]
I appreciate the fact that I've never had a job. I spent a lifetime learning, teaching, serving some of the most special people on earth, and I'm honored to be identified as a teacher. I've had 23,000 students that have gone through my classes over the years, and I've learned so much from each one of them. And if I were to take advantage of Matt's invitation, I would talk about what I've learned from my colleagues and friends, but especially from my students. They've changed my life in so many ways and I appreciate the opportunity they've had to help UVU get off the ground. Norm was a little overly-complimentary in his statement of my contribution, but it has been really fun and really rewarding to see this institution grow, and to work with faculty and hire many, John Westover among the group, and to try and aspire to something greater than just a school where people go to graduate and get a job, but to really make a difference in the world. So Trustees, President, all of you, thank you so much, and thanks for all of us who have been honored this evening, for the opportunity to make a difference in this institution.
Thank you.