President Barbara Jean Morris: Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro My Oneonta Life

Dr. Morris:        My heart rate was up and that's exactly what you don't want your heart rate to go up because you don't have that much oxygen. And I'm expended a lot of energy. I hadn't slept cause we left at midnight. People were getting sick, there were life flights, helicopters coming, picking up people. And so I was daydreaming about how I could get my life flight helicopter, come get me. So, and how can I stop doing this and what a stupid thing to do on my birthday.Host:                Welcome to my Oneonta life, a podcast about everything Oneonta. I'm your host Jared Stanley. On this show we discovered the stories and experiences of the people who make SUNY Oneonta the place we like to call home [inaudible].Host:                Most people can agree there's nothing better than a great vacation, whether it's time on a beach, a weekend in the city, or a trip across the world, it doesn't really matter where you go as long as it's time away from the daily grind. Dr. Barbara Jean Morris is Sunni Oneonta's eighth president and she just started her second year in the position in July. Her summer vacation was a bit unconventional. She decided to travel to the country of Tanzania and spent eight days climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. While many people wouldn't consider this challenge of vacation. Dr. Morris is an outdoor enthusiast and she is an avid skier, surfer and hiker. She attributes her love of the outdoors to her family outings. As a child,Dr. Morris:        I was raised, uh, essentially outdoors. I always like to tell a story. My dad, um, uh, taught my sister and I to be survivalist. And so when we were in elementary school, when we would go camping, whether it's the mountains, the desert or, um, beach camping, whatever it is, we would, he would place us somewhere and he would say, fine tin things and find your way back to camp. It was just, uh, a way that we learned how to, um, look at the surroundings and understand our surroundings and, um, be able to, to think about where you were and how you could survive, uh, at any given time. So outdoors was always part of our life.Host:                You may be wondering why Kilimanjaro, what was the draw to this particular mountain?Dr. Morris:        Yeah, so Kilimanjaro it's been on the list for some time and partially because it's one of the big mountains, but it doesn't have a lot of the mountaineering technical side. I mean I have done technical, um, climbing and I've done rock climbing, but it wasn't Everest or that type of commitment that you're going to have to be there for months. So, um, Kilimanjaro just is, has that more accessible way. They call it a walkup. But, um, I didn't really think it was a walkup. It was harder than a walkup.Host:                Climbing Kilimanjaro requires hikers to be an extremely good shape. Dr. Morris is a regular at the campus gym at 5:30 AM but she realized that her workout routine needed a boost. Come to find out the Hills of Oneonta were the perfect match.Dr. Morris:        So I had this, uh, kind of walk, run, um, loop that I did. So it starts over by the tennis courts. There's a very steep Hill to the Memorial Hill and to the upper, um, soccer and rugby fields and kind of come down and go down, um, the cow path. And then we'd go all the way into town. Then we'd do the Hartwick stairs and come back and then go up Clinton street and then come back up that, um, that other Hill. So those, because they're such steep grades, um, both going up and down and that was really the mimic, um, many of the steep grades, um, throughout the eight days of, of tracking. So, uh, I would say Oneonta is a very good place because of the, the Hills and where SUNY Oneonta is situated is, is great. So all of our students that, um, do the cow path, uh, on a daily basis that they're ready to go to KilimanjaroDr. Morris:        first f