SOMERS - After four days on her new job, Debbie Ford, the new chancellor for the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, sat down with The Journal Times to talk about herself and her new position.

She was born in Owensboro, in western Kentucky, but was raised in Louisville, Ky. She comes to Racine from Pensacola, Fla., where she was vice president of student affairs at West Florida University, which has 10,500 students.

Her husband, John, telecommutes for his job in medical practice management. They have two children, Abby, 15, and John David, who will be 12 in about a month.

Were you looking generally for another job or did you see this opportunity and say "That's for me?"

It's the latter.

Why?

Probably the opportunity to work with first-generation college students.

Are you first generation yourself?Yes I am.

And the campus profile really attracted me. The opportunity for access for students, creating opportunities for students who enroll here ... One of the things that I talked about, and heard it over and over throughout the meetings that were held on campus, is the commitment to academic excellence, the commitment to community engagement, and certainly a commitment to diversity and inclusiveness.

What hobbies do you have?

I enjoy reading ... John Grisham, Sue Grafton. That's more summertime reading. I like to read books on leadership.

I enjoy cooking. It's a way to experiment.

And spending time with my family.

What type of music do you like?

I don't have necessarily a favorite artist or a favorite type. If I had to pick I would say jazz and rock 'n' roll. Not country.

Talk about the Argos Scholars program at West Florida University.The county ... has one of the highest poverty rates outside of the Miami-Dade area.

The university and one of the high schools partnered and created the Argos Scholars program. And the program is intended to assist students ... They are mentored and also guaranteed admission ... assuming they meet all the admissions requirements. The goal was to bring them campus, introduce them to college life, connect them with faculty members and programs of interest.

Our hope, when that programs was created, was to increase the college attendance rate.

It is an opportunity for the community, a university, and a high school to work together, and certainly a model that I would hope to be able to pursue here to see how it might fit.

How did you come to attend the annual national security seminar at the Army War College last summer?

A very good friend of the University of West Florida is a retired brigadier general ... We also served in the same Rotary Club in Pensacola, and he said, "I'd like to nominate you for this opportunity."

About 30 percent of the students there (West Florida University) are somehow affiliated with the military.

They bring in community members from every area to serve and to be a part of their seminar for the last week. And we served with Army officers, Navy officers, Air Force officers, and military officers from around the world.

Nationally known speakers would come in and given their seminar. We would go back and discuss it, discuss issues of importance, what was emerging in the news at that time in June of 2008. We certainly got into dialogues and heard different perspectives.

One of the things I learned is how the military ... values leadership and leadership development.