罗伯特·格利登，《反思》

The OHIO-CHUBU Relationship—A Brief Essay

Robert Glidden, President Emeritus

Suffice it to say that I was well informed about the warm and friendly relationship between Ohio University and the Chubu Institute of Technology from the earliest days of my tenure as president of Ohio University, and that was probably at least partly because of the close  friendship between my predecessor at OHIO, President Charles Ping, and the then-president of the Chubu Institute, Kazuo Yamada. As I understand it, the relationship between the two institutions predated the friendship between Presidents Ping and Yamada, as I believe Physics Professor Tomoyasu Tanaka is credited with first bringing the two institutions together. I remember Professor Tanaka well. He was a friendly, outgoing person who was impossible not to like personally and to admire professionally. He was, I am sure, universally admired and appreciated on both campuses.

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More bothersome than that to me personally was the matter of attire. I had been told only to bring a dark suit, which I did. It was a navy blue suit, which I wore with a white shirt and plain very dark burgundy necktie.  My embarrassment stemmed from the fact that every other speaker, of whom there were five or six, was attired in a formal morning suit, which consisted of formal striped trousers, white formal shirt with winged collar and black formal bow tie. I kept thinking that my navy and burgundy must have looked like a clown outfit in comparison.  Although I don’t own a formal morning suit I certainly would have rented or purchased one had I known.

One other detail about this formal ceremony that should be mentioned is that the stage was covered with gorgeous yellow rosebuds.  It was, indeed, a beautiful setting!, which made me all the more regretful about my navy and burgundy. 

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Throughout the decade of my presidency at OHIO we enjoyed many close friendships with leaders at Chubu.  During the 2003-2004 year, when we were wrapping up our University Bicentennial fundraising campaign, we at OHIO were favored with a major gift, unsolicited I might add, from Chubu University. As I recall, the gift was 100 million Yen, or about $850,000, which we used to renovate a building on the Athens campus. We named the building Yamada House International and it today remains the center for Japanese activities at Ohio University. Chubu also very generously sent cherry trees to replace a few of the 175 they had presented 25 years earlier that had not survived, plus an additional 25 to bring the total number of trees to 200 to mark the University’s Bicentennial. Chubu’s blooming cherry trees, which line the bank of the Hocking River near the Convocation Center, are a beautiful feature on OHIO’s campus every spring.

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