Spring Break
The Daily OrangeStill on the Hill: Former Chancellor Kenneth 'Buzz' Shaw remains at SU as Whitman professor
By Amy McKeever
Posted: 12/9/05, 12:10 AM EST Section: News
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Buzz Shaw stood at the front of the classroom in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, working at the teaching console, trying to turn on the overhead projector. His blue eyes narrowed as he stared at the array of switches before him. Finally, he pecked at a button, and the projector's light snapped on. He swiveled his head to look at it, then patted the console in gratitude. Technology wasn't going to fail him today.
Shaw started his lecture, but a few minutes into it, the projector's light shut off.
"Anybody know why this is not working?" Shaw asked his class.
Several of the 12 students buried their heads in their arms. It was a 9:30 a.m. class, after all. A handful of the students suggested Shaw call tech support. Shaw brushed it off.
"Who needs props, right?" he asked.
Shaw had never before needed to master technology. During the 13 years he served as Syracuse University's chancellor, he had assistants who operated projectors during his presentations. Now, almost a year and a half removed from that job, Shaw has to fend for himself.
Though he retired as chancellor in the spring of 2004, Shaw says his life has changed little. He is still doing the things that have always mattered to him: teaching, leading and learning. He and his wife, Mary Ann, have also kept at least as busy as they were when he worked 70-hour weeks as chancellor, and she volunteered for various community organizations.
Since the projector had failed, the students pulled out their textbooks in preparation for Shaw's regular grilling on which part of their reading assignment had what he refers to as "take-home value." It was the week before Thanksgiving Break, though, and nobody had done the reading. Shaw turned to a visitor in the classroom and joked, "You know, 90 percent of these kids are failing this class. And the projector doesn't work."
The text they were supposed to have read was a section of "The Intentional Leader," the book Shaw wrote in his first year of retirement. It's a compilation of his graduate work on the sociology of organizations, research he'd done by reading 25 or so books on leadership and, most importantly, his own experiences. "The Intentional Leader" is a slim book of 226 pages, and Shaw said he expects his students to know its contents well.
Aside from working on the book, Buzz and Mary Ann spent the first year after he retired split between their two homes in Skaneateles and Western Springs, Ill. While in the Midwest, they traveled around to visit their three children and seven grandchildren in Illinois and Missouri. In the past, the Shaws scrambled to find the free time to bring their family on a Nags Head vacation in North Carolina. Retirement changed that. They also went to baseball games, took a vacation with the grandchildren to Niagara Falls and attended some Broadway shows.
