by Jim Parsons
Campus Editor
For many people, switching jobs and locations would be difficult, between moving into a new house, adjusting to a different climate and culture, and making new friends.
For June Smith, the move from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Houston has been much easier.
Smith, wife of the University of Houston System Chancellor/UH President Arthur Smith, took time to discuss her move, adjustment and plans with The Daily Cougar Tuesday.
"We've been to a number of affairs (since moving to Houston)," she said. "We've hit the ground running. It's just a continuation of what we were doing in Utah."
Smith, wearing a conservative blue suit, was animated and warm as she talked about the welcome she received in Houston.
"People are extremely welcoming, very friendly, very nice. We're very happy," she said. As for the decision to transfer from the University of Utah to UH, she said she had a "50 percent vote.
"My husband loves a challenge," she explained. "He was extremely interested in the university and the System (in Houston)." She said she changed her mind a few times along the way, but the fact that her son lives in Dallas - along with five grandchildren - was a big influence in becoming a transplanted Texan.
She said some friends in Utah had warned her about the humidity in Houston. "Little did they know that I like humidity," she said, laughing.
Smith's professional career since graduating from college has been influenced by her husband's transfers, she said. Smith taught high school and elementary school for 22 years, mixed with graduate work and a year in Mexico City.
But as for the transfers, Smith said they aren't as difficult as they might seem. "People are people wherever you go," she said. "They're good people. We spent 18 years in upstate New York, and I thought I was going to live and die there, but then we moved to South Carolina and I loved it.
"When you're in the business we're in, you have an immediate family," she said.
A family is precisely what Smith said she hopes to form in Houston. "We are a family," she said of the university community. "Without each other, the university would not run. We work together to make everything happen."
She said she plans to get involved locally and promote UH, the System and everything that is going on within those groups. "I think if more people would get involved (with higher education), they would absolutely love it," she said.
"Every now and then, people ask me what I do, and I say 'development,'" she said. "People ask me, 'Is there anything I can do?' and I say, 'For heaven's sake, have I got a job for you!'"
Smith said she has enjoyed her time in Houston - she has been here since early April - and has found the students to be "just as good as, or better" than any she has encountered.
"We're very excited about what's happening (at UH), and what's going to happen," she said, adding that she enjoyed visiting Frontier Fiesta last weekend. "We got to meet a lot of students, and they all seemed to be having a good time."
Smith said she hopes to open access to the UH presidency and System chancellorship by promoting the school and System in Houston, building the community she mentioned, and also by inviting people to her home, the Wortham House.
"We're very happy to be at Wortham House," she said. "We hope to welcome Houstonians. I think it's very important to have people in my house."
She said that, in Utah, she and her husband worked to invite everyone - faculty, staff and students - to the president's house, and she hopes to do the same here. "Everybody is special," she said. "In helping each other, we help ourselves."
How much say does she have in decisions Arthur Smith makes? "We've always been a team," she said. "I'm his biggest fan and teammate. Of course, I'm his wife, but I think he's very special."
Outside the professional arena, Smith said she and Arthur enjoy bridge, golf and travel - "when we get the chance."
She also enjoys reading ("I sneak it in now and then"), and is currently taking in a book on insurance man and philanthropist Gus Wortham, plus the weekly news magazines and the daily paper.
She added that reading has always been important - she worked in an adult literacy program while living in South Carolina. "I was very much involved. ... That is something I really enjoyed, and will do again if I have a chance."
In the meantime, Smith's enthusiasm about UH is apparent. But as she left campus Tuesday, she wasn't as worried about her next appointment, the oppressive afternoon humidity or the infamous Houston traffic as much as she was concerned about driving back to Wortham House.
"I don't worry about traffic," she said, "but I do worry about finding my way home."