"A change in the wind:" An interview with Interim Chancellor Martin

Student Voice (SV): Tell me a little bit about yourself. You’re talking to a student or a faculty member; how do you introduce yourself to them?

Michael Martin (MM): I’m a first-generation college attendee from a very blue-collar family, started out on the Iron Range in Minnesota, the oldest of four and the only one to go to college. I think the other three might have followed had they been able to get the same jumpstart I did‚. So I started out at the Iron Range. My dad worked in the mines‚. And then we ended up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota when they moved him down there, and I graduated from St. Louis Park High, and went on to a regional comprehensive in Mankato and fell in love with the prospect of being an academic. I have now devoted 53 years to service in public higher education, and it’s been a wonderful journey‚. I’ve got two great kids. They’re both adopted from Korea; one’s 46 and one’s 47. Two grandkids, 9 and 12. A wife of 54 years. That’s pretty much who I am.

SV: And is that the main reason you’re here at UWRF, because of Maria Gallo?

MM: I believe in the mission of these places‚. The regional comprehensives fill the biggest single void or the biggest real need in higher education. About 77% of grads come from places like this‚. So it’s both a case where I’m captivated by the mission, I knew Maria, and I was intrigued about the prospect‚. I thought, well, if I have the physical stamina, and hopefully my cognitive skills haven’t declined too much with older age, I can do this for a while.

SV: From an outside perspective, what do you think about the current state of UWRF?

MM: I think there’s a real challenge across higher education in the country, and I think it’s being felt in the Wisconsin System and on this campus‚. We cast the usefulness of these institutions in the wrong way. In an attempt to appeal to students, we told students, if you get a degree, here’s what your lifelong income is going to be. We made it a private good. When it’s a private good, and then asking the public to pay for it, you’ve got to disconnect, right? If it’s a private good, why do I have to pay for you to make more money, as a taxpayer? So I think there’s been a pushback on that. And I think we need to return not just in Wisconsin, but across public higher education, to the argument that what we have is also a very powerful public good.

So I think we misstated it, and we need to correct the record. I think there’s that tension in the Wisconsin System, because a lot of universities have yet to recover from the COVID decline in enrollment. The state has been more parsimonious toward higher education in Wisconsin than in many other states. It’s not alone; others are feeling the same pressure. So you feel that tension on campus. You feel that among the faculty, staff, the uncertainty.

SV: Do you think there are any unique challenges that you’ve noticed so far?

MM: I think there’s a couple. Clearly, we’ve got to get over the challenge of a pretty tough budget situation. I think there’s good news-but you shouldn’t take it as too much good news yet-in the upturn in enrollment. I think that’s a positive sign. But there’s a long way to go. And that means having to do one of two things.‚ There’s clearly surplus capacity here. If there weren’t, you wouldn’t mothball the residence halls.

There’s surplus capacity because the faculty is as big as it was before the pandemic but there’s many fewer students. So you have two choices‚. get rid of the surplus capacity or repackage it and sell it in new ways, including things like certificate programs for the community and a variety of things. First, the challenge is getting people to acknowledge that it’s true because people want to blame someone and say, “oh, it’s the legislature’s fault.” That may well be.

But if the legislature isn’t going to solve it for you, you better damn well solve it for yourself. So doing that doesn’t gain us anything. It’s an interesting way to vent and maybe feel a little bit better for an hour or so. But the bottom line, it comes back to what can this institution do innovatively. The new building is going to make a big difference.

I’ve got a simple-minded view of the world, and the real world is you’ve got too many people right here, given the number of students who are coming on. You got to figure out a way to use those people in a new way‚. Maybe we do some business certificate programs for technical college grads so you can learn the business side: accounting, personnel management, etc. But one way or another, you have to face the reality that either you would offload some, humanely, some excess capacity, or you repackage it and figure out a way to make it useful in the community‚. I think you got this challenge of figuring out, and people collectively figuring out, how we modify what we do and how we grow enrollment. The biggest challenge in enrollment here isn’t recruiting. It’s retention. 28% of the freshmen don’t come back in the fall‚. If you cut that to 17 or 15, it solves a lot of financial problems.

SV: Maria mentioned that she would like to see those numbers at around like 80% [for] second year retention.

MM: I think you can do better. I think you could do 85‚. If you’re fairly open admission and accessible, you’re going to admit some students who just aren’t ready. I think there are some things you can do. One is to do summer boot camps in a couple of key areas: math, English and science, for students who may not have been as well prepared coming out of high school‚ and give them a jumpstart. I think you need a default major like interdisciplinary studies or liberal studies, where you can repackage your credits into a legitimate degree without having to be discipline-specific‚. You have to be proactive in advising and interventions.

If a faculty member sees a student that’s kind of falling off the cliff, you’ve got to do something about it and not just let them fall. You’ve got to be able to find a way to give them the best possible start you can. I’m going to see if I can extract a little money from a foundation over in Minnesota that I worked with in another life to beta test a summer boot camp.

SV: And what would that [boot camp] look like?

MM: First of all, you have to get a sense of where they are. Particularly right now, I think math skills are probably one of the biggest bumps in the road, but there are some others. Then you have a three-week, pre-semester boot camp here, and you actually give the students a stipend. It’s a $400 certificate for a discount on your tuition. And you have some concentrated time in two or three key platform programs so that people come in better-prepared and more confident that they can master it. A lot of places have gone to this model, and I think we can maybe get a little money as a pilot project from a private foundation to try it. So I dipped my toe in the water to see if through some friends who happen to be on the board of this particular foundation, if they’d be my advocate, if I made a pitch for a three-year trial basis.

MM: So you mentioned SciTech earlier, and Maria talked a little bit about SciTech when I interviewed her, and she was talking about the collaborative nature of it.

MM: The universities, particularly ones like this, not only have a role to play beyond the campus in partnership, but [this partnership] enriches the campus itself. I, over a long career, have worked hard to recognize that you’re part of a much larger economic and social ecosystem, and there are ways in which you can both benefit the institution and in turn, benefit those around you‚. To me, that’s the new model for these kinds of institutions, to blur the margins between the institution and the community. I think that’s doable here in many ways.

SV: You mentioned the state legislature earlier‚. There’s not a lot of state support for higher education in Wisconsin, which kind of brings into question like, does the state legislature value it? I wanted to ask you about that.

MM: I think that too often we cast our lot with the legislature based on what we need and want‚. People are saying, we’re 43rd in the country, in funding from the state. That’s what the mantra is‚. Well, how do we move up? It isn’t by telling legislators how bad we feel or that we’re 43rd. It’s that if you invest more, the people who vote for you will be better off. Just think about this place in this community. One of the things you look at is what’s called the multiplier effect.

If you spend another buck here, it circulates through this economy. How many more bucks does it create in income? Somewhere between 4 and 7. But whatever it is, it’s not trivial‚. A university is the cleanest, highest multiplier industry you can have because it’s labor intensive.

SV: What do you think of the university’s efforts that they’ve already made to address the financial concerns?

MM: I think they’ve made a lot of progress. I’m impressed. I’m impressed with the discipline people have shown and the willingness, even if it’s painful willingness, to face this reality. I mean, I think Maria did a great job. I think others in the administration, the deans and others, have seriously understood the issue. We talked about the strategic plan because it expires, so to speak, next year. And my argument is, extend the strategic plan two years. It’s still a good plan. The difference now is the tactical implementation. Let’s try some new tactics.

So the plan is okay. You just have to see if you can find some new and clever ways to continue to make progress. It calls for 80% retention rate. We’re still at 72 this fall. So we haven’t closed that gap much. I actually believe people have worked pretty damn hard to make it work. You know, Oshkosh really took a beating, a self-imposed beating. The problem is that Oshkosh has sort of labeled all the rest of us, who didn’t do what Oshkosh did, which is spend all their reserves and make commitments they couldn’t keep. But now we’re trapped by being sort of stained by that reality. I’m not sure I would have taken on the interim role at Oshkosh. That’s a little like a rat swimming toward a sinking ship. But I think they’ll come out of it okay. I think this place has handled it as well as it probably could have expected. But there’s still more to do.

SV: And you’d say that from an economist perspective as well?

MM: You never stop thinking like what you were trained to think about. I taught economics for a long time, and it’s a little hard to shed my underlying model of the world, which is largely economic‚. You can see the world any way you want, but you can’t deny reality. And I think economics gives you a pretty good sense of a piece of reality.

SV: So your plan then as Interim Chancellors is to continue those strategic efforts and then implement‚ new things as well?

MM: One of the things I can do that maybe someone long-term would be reluctant to do is to take some risk, because my career is over. The worst they can do is send me home and that’s okay with me. I’ve got a pretty significant job as grandpa, and I’ve enjoyed that enormously‚. But as long as I’m here, I’m willing to be the person who, if we take some risks and they don’t work, can be blamed for. I don’t mind that at all‚. I’m perfectly prepared to be the person you turn to and say, that was really a stupid idea, and Martin made me do it.

SV: Is there anything you’d like to add to what you’ve said?

MM: I have the benefit of being newly arrived and [having a] fresh view of the place. And I think during hard times, one doesn’t get the opportunity to pause and say, there’s some huge, huge, interesting opportunities here. I think the place is better than some people think it is right now. And I think the horizon is much more inviting than some people [say].‚ There’s a lot of research in the psychological literature on people’s personal characteristics and how they choose a profession. That’s why you get stereotypes‚. Academics, according to the literature, are more risk-averse than the normal population. So one of the things you need to do in an environment like this is persuade the people who are here in the trenches that the status quo is riskier than the change you’re proposing. So you play to their risk aversion. I think we got that message out there, and I think that gives rise to persuasion and courageous experiments in an effort to continually remake these places. The first university that we think of as a university in Western style was opened in 1088, in Bologna, Italy. It’s still there.

Bologna is still there because they continued to adapt to times. I guarantee you, the way they were operating in 1088 is not the way they’re operating today‚. I think right now we’re at that inflection point where people understand, even if they don’t like to understand, that there’s going to be change in the wind. You can be party to it, and you can help invent it, or you can resist it, when it’s coming either way‚. If there’s one message, at least from my perspective, [being] very new to this place, but very long-serving in public higher education, there’s more good opportunities here than people may realize.

Read the full interview here: https://uwrfvoice.com/2024/10/an-interview-with-interim-chancellor-martin-full-interview/