In college, Schmidly did enough to get by

by Jeremy Hunt

Daily Lobo

UNM President David Schmidly didn't know what he wanted to do when he started college in the early '60s.

"I was interested in basketball and girls," he said. "Academics was the last thing on my list of priorities."

Schmidly started his tenure as the University's 20th president on June 1. He was the president and CEO of the Oklahoma State University system before coming to UNM. And he was president of Texas Tech before then.

He got his bachelor's and master's in zoology from Texas Tech and his doctorate from the University of Illinois.

He will be inaugurated in October.

Growing up on a farm in west Texas, Schmidly said he always loved animals.

"When I was a little boy, I was always trying to catch animals," he said. "I drove my mother crazy."

He said a biology course was the only interesting class in his first semester at Texas Tech.

"I think it may have been the only class I got better than a C in," he said. "I wasn't successful in chemistry. I didn't like it. I just did well enough to get by."

Schmidly has a beer mug from his fraternity, Sigma Nu, but he said it doesn't get used much anymore.

It sits on a shelf in his office in Scholes Hall.

"Most of my socializing was done through my fraternity, and we did a lot of things I probably shouldn't talk about," he said. "In those days, there was a lot of hazing and shenanigans going on."

Schmidly's love for animals motivated him to do well in school, he said.

"I just gradually shifted my interests to academics, and the more interested I got in it, the better I did," he said. "Once I got enthusiastic about learning, there was nothing to stop me."

As an undergraduate, Schmidly was on a committee that hired Robert Baker to work in the Texas Tech biology department.

Baker mentored Schmidly, and they worked together on projects and took field trips.

"People typically think of mentors as being the one that takes and brings somebody along, but the bottom line, from my life, is you learn together," Baker said. "We acted more like two students together."

Schmidly was bright eyed and bushy tailed as an undergraduate, Baker said.

"He was a kid from a small town out here that was just beginning to see how big the world was," he said.

Baker said he has seen UNM's president grow over the years, and Schmidly has a much broader perspective than he did as a professor.

"When you're a biology professor, you're concerned with the nuts and bolts, grades and classes, things like that," he said. "Now he's concerned a lot more with how to build a better university."

Schmidly said that besides his wife, there are four people who helped see him through to his PhD in zoology, including Baker.

The others are Don Hoffmeister, a professor at the University of Illinois; Robert Packard, a Texas Tech professor; and Raymond Lee, a professor at the University of Illinois, he said.

If it wasn't for them, Schmidly said he would not have made it far.

"I'd probably be a broke cotton farmer," he said. "There's probably a good chance of that."

The biggest factor in Schmidly's success was his parents, he said.

His father taught him to work hard, and his mother taught him to read, which he needed to be successful in college, Schmidly said.

"It did not come easy to me," he said. "The way I was raised, plus the kinds of schools I went to, shaped me."

Baker said Schmidly is a successful leader because he's a good communicator.

Schmidly always wanted to talk and shoot ideas around about how to make things better, Baker said.

"He was a joy to be around," he said.

"David always had that perspective that things were wonderful, and that you ought to appreciate and take advantage of them."