An interview with Interim Chancellor Martin: Full interview

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? 

MM: I think people need to know who you are and not just what you've been. 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. But I got addicted to it. 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. I still find it fascinating, after all these years, to hang around and feel what's going on on a campus and interact with colleagues and learn something…. 

SV: I was talking with Maria Gallo the other day…. And she mentioned that you learned to weld at CVTC.

MM: I did, so I have three degrees in economics and a welding certificate. I started strictly by accident. I got a job right out from my master's degree at Eau Claire and the Econ department as an instructor. It's right next door to the technical college. So I thought learning how to weld might be a useful fallback, just in case. My dad had all the stuff in his shop that you needed…. So not only could I learn to do it, I could fool around in the shop and weld all I wanted to. Despite the fact that I actually took the courses and passed the test, I was never as good a welder as my dad, and he used to point that out to me with great regularity. So that was just one of the interesting things you can do if you have a little curiosity, and I was curious about whether or not I could learn to do it. I still carry my certificate around with me just in case…. The welding I do is more an art form than a technical skill because everything has become so much more technologically advanced. Much of what I would have done had I been a welder is now done by robots. That was one of my one of my adventures in life.

SV: You mentioned you got addicted to the prospect of being an academic. How do you go from learning how to weld to being involved in several universities like that?

MM: This actually the fifth time I've been the CEO, so to speak. And I tell people the first rule of welding and the first rule of being a university chancellor are pretty much the same thing. Just because it isn't still red doesn't mean it isn't still hot; be careful what you pick up. So you learn lessons that translate into other outcomes…. I hadn't intended to be an academic. I had been interviewing to be an assistant city manager of Le Sueur, Minnesota, the home of the Jolly Green Giant... And then, just out of the blue, I get this call saying, “We really need somebody at Eau Claire right now. We've had a resignation. Are you willing to come over and try to teach some economics?” I thought, “Yeah. What the heck? I'll give it a try.” And that got me started on this process…. I was a Dean at Minnesota when Maria was hired as an Assistant Professor. And then we were both in Florida again. When I found out she was a Chancellor [of UW-River Falls], I just wrote her an email saying, I can help you with something, I live 25 minutes from here…. And then she said, “I really want to retire, and it would be comforting to me to know that there is someone of interest who could step in.”

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

MM: I believe in the mission of these places…. The regional comprehensive fill the biggest single void or the biggest real need in higher education. About 77% of grads come from places like this…. I mean, you can go to the Ivy League and if you don't have an ACT of 32, you're not going to get it. What do you do is [if you] take the most-prepared students, all you can do is screw them up, right? But places like this really add value to the individuals and then in turn, to the greater society. I believe that's a very high calling. So I was fascinated by it because I spent the last six years at a regional comprehensive after being at R1s* my entire career. And I came away from that experience saying, this is where the real action is in terms of changing the world. I've got nothing against good old Ivy Leaguers. I know an awful lot of them. But it's pretty rarefied air. I'm much more comfortable in a place that really adds significant value to the quality of the lives of those who come through, and [UWRF] does. So it's both a case where I'm captivated by the mission, I knew Maria, and I was in 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 and enjoy it.

*R1: A doctoral university, with very high research activity

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. Two founding fathers of this country started universities. Benjamin Franklin started the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson started the University of Virginia. And if you go back and read why they did it, it had nothing to do with giving people higher incomes. They believed that the democracy and the country could not prosper without an educated populace….

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. But I think the place has got a good story to tell. I think the Wisconsin system is still an enviable system and has been envied for many years by other states. I think there's been some slippage, but I do think it's still possible to recast it. There's a lot of that out there. Smaller percentage of high school grads are going to traditional colleges…. There's been a real surge in technical colleges. I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all, being a welder. Here's the reason I got a degree and not just a welding certificate. I wanted choice. At 40 years old, I may not want to be a welder anymore. And what am I going to be if all I have is a welding certificate? So not only does [a college education] give you a springboard for career and a life, but it gives you choices.

SV: How do you think that applies specifically to this institution? You mentioned the state of higher education in Wisconsin as a whole. And how does that reflect here versus somewhere like Eau Claire or Madison?

MM: You've got some unique programs here. There's only three colleges of agriculture and life sciences in the system: Madison, Platteville, and here. So you've got that to build on, right? This place has it's a unique character because it has the opportunity to have very adjacent work and life experiences right next door, and internships, and a variety of things. But at the end of the day, we all have one shared goal. And I tell students this all the time. I said, is it really what you major in, because the world's going to change at a very rapid pace. What you've done here and what we do here is teach you how to learn, and then you can remake yourself and continue. I've spoken at a lot of commencements, and I always say it's called commencement and not termination for a reason. We're commencing on your education. You now have a structure of how to re-educate. And that's what you do here. And that's what I think is done pretty well here…. So once you land here, you're not stuck with one destination…. You got latitude here. And I think this place has carved out a niche. Yesterday I visited the farm out here and the Equine Program and the rodeo program; they're unique to this institution. And it's not just about agriculture. You can learn a lot of other stuff out there…. So I think River Falls has a special place to serve students who have this particular need and this particular interest in mind. And that was the whole benefit of the Wisconsin System. When I started in the system 53 years ago, Eau Claire was primarily a teacher's college. And so everybody had a little special thing…. There's been a little amalgamation, but all in all, I think this has carved out a niche, an identity, for itself…. And I think it doesn't hurt to have a really good D3 sports program. 

SV: The sports program is doing very well.

MM: I spent time in the big time. I mean I got some big damn national championship rings… at LSU in particular. But [D3] is the last bastion of real college sports. The student athletes who come here come to play the game, not to get the money. The NIL*, the transfer portal and all that goes with it has really corrupted what was once an extracurricular activity. [It’s] supposed to be a learning experience. Right now it's just become an enterprise. And when you're paying coaches like Brian Kelly at LSU a contract of $110 million over ten years, it's ridiculous. And some of those players are picking up a million bucks. [D3] is what it was supposed to be about. And this place is one of the few places in the world that stayed that way.

*NIL: Name, Image, Likeness, or the right of college athletes to copyright and profit off of their name and personal brand as an athlete

SV: So you mentioned a lot of unique benefits and unique strengths. 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. That is, I think, the big challenge. 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. And that's a message that the people of the state of Wisconsin still believe in this place.

I met Friday with the faculty and staff leadership and said, look, 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…. Had I been a welder, maybe the day would have come when I wanted to own a welding shop.… 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 got 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 communities…. People always say to me, “Well, our morale is low.” I said, “Well, how do you know?” How do you measure morale? Well, I know that's a wonderful thing to say to make you feel like you got to do something. But how do you know that?... I think your safety and your happiness is pretty much your [own]….

So it's pretty hard for me or anyone, whether it's here or any other place in life, right? I don't expect people to work to make me happy. That's my responsibility…. So anyhow, 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. And you'd have a lot more graduates going out the other end. 

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

Yeah, that's in the strategic plan. 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. Most universities do, including Madison. And you need a few of those things so that an advisor can say, look at Jack*. It's highly unlikely you'll be a chemical engineer. Here's something you can be and let me help you get there. So you got 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. A lot of universities do it, for all their students. 

*Jack Schindler Van Hoof, the Student Voice reporter who interviewed Michael Martin

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

MM: First of all, you got 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…. She mentioned that as a strength of yours, [that] you have lots of connections and you've collaborated with a lot of people. And what would you say about that?

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. One of the things we did in my time at Florida Gulf Coast University [was ask] “What's the unique nature [of this region]?” What are the things that characterize it? At least two things. One is water. There's a lot of water and a lot of water problems, not just the coast, the Caloosahatchee River. The Everglades…. So why don't we become a significant regional player in all things related to water? And we persuaded the legislature to build us 117,000 square foot building, and they gave us a nice chunk of money to hire some new faculty and recruit some students. And it's off and rolling. It's just called the FCC Water School. People said, why did you call it that? I said, because there's a space between the word ‘the’ and ‘water’ for someone's name. We'll take a nice big check and put your name right in that slot. Then the other thing that you have in southwest Florida is a lot of retirees. It's a very elderly part of the world. A couple of the counties down there are among the most elderly counties in America. So why don't we focus on the issues related to the elderly? So we launched a program called Positive Aging, and got another new building, 87 million bucks, and an appropriation to launch the Positive Aging Institute in collaboration with a number of local organizations, including the two biggest hospitals. To me, that's the new model for these kinds of institutions, to blur the margins between the institution and the community. So I think I think that's doable here in many ways.

 … The other area that Maria knows I'm committed to, and this goes back to my very beginning as a Dean of Minnesota, is the collaboration with the tribal colleges and tribal communities…. You’ve got within a relatively short distance, six tribal colleges we could work with…. I've approached [the president of one of these colleges] about [the possibility of[ a little pilot project here that would engage us with the tribal colleges, not only in the process of considering how we reintroduce or expand the role of indigenous foods, but to make a two-plus-two program* for some of those two-year institutions. The one I'm most familiar with is Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in Cloquet, because I had a long-standing relationship. And if you look at the demographics here, you've got a pretty big Indian population of students here. And you ask yourself, why aren't they coming here to finish a four-year degree. And sometimes it isn't what makes them come here.  [It’s] what prevents them from coming here…. So those are some of the other collaborations. But I really do believe there's a huge, expanding opportunity to do other things. And that's part of using up the excess capacity.

*Two-plus-two programs: a program that allows a student to earn a bachelor’s degree by completing two years at a community college, then transferring to a four-year college to complete the final two years of study for the bachelor’s degree

SV: Are there any other collaborative efforts that you'd like to mention?

MM: I think there’s some things to explore. Right over there is a bookstore. Follett is the bookstore at UW-Stout and at UW-Eau Claire. They merged the actual management of the bookstore over three institutions…. Follett provides a single effective bookstore over three institutions. The question is, are there some other opportunities to do that? … Do we need to have to have a standalone payroll office? Do we need to have a standalone purchasing office? Do we need to have standalone vehicle maintenance? The questions are, with three institutions 60 miles apart, are there some backroom things we can do that would reduce costs at both places? And that's always a tension because people want to control. But I don't care about control. I care about outcomes. If the outcome is right, I'll let anybody control it. What can you outsource or co-source in this environment that would make you more efficient, effective, and allow you to focus on your core mission and not on the backroom kind of necessities? There's a good deal of that.

SV: You mentioned the state legislature earlier… and Maria mentioned this, and we've been noticing this over the last few years, that 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, and what you would do to help that along. 

MM: I think that too often we cast our lot with the legislature based on what we need and want. With legislators… what you got to do is explain to them why their constituents are better off funding us. People are saying, we're 43rd in the country, in funding from the state. That's what the mantra is. Well, somebody's got to be 43rd, right? This isn't Lake Wobegon. Not everyone's number one. 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. They did some regional economics, and 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. Nothing leaks out of here. If you manufacture automobiles here, about 17% of the value of automobiles stays here because all the parts come from Japan and Korea and [everywhere] else. But here, the labor is intensive. So you've got to explain to the legislators and others, even if we didn't do anything here, just spending the money is good for your community…. People are buying haircuts and beer and cheeseburgers and whatever, here in this community. We've never made that case of late, well enough…. The Saint Louis Federal Reserve studied the impact of Pell Grants on the community. Every buck of a Pell Grant, students spend it all. They don't save their Pell Grant or invest it in some company in Silicon Valley. They spend it. So, you know it's going to get spent, 100%. It was a 4.8 multiplier. And so my view has always been, you've got to persuade or engage legislators, people who run for public office [and tell them] why it is that the people they represent and the people who vote for them in the future are better off because you put some money in. Not because the faculty want more, or the students want something else. Then you get those [benefits]. That's the secondary impact. The other thing that we haven't done a good job of dealing with is the misperceptions of people who don't take the time to take a real close look at it. People say, well, the cost of higher education has exploded. The actual education has gone down. It's having a good rec center. It's having a huge counseling center. It's having this place, [the University Center].

All the amenities are what's exploded. So the full cost of attendance has gone up, but the tuition and educational part of that… has actually either stabilized or gone down. At my last [university], people would say, well, the students are taking on all this debt. That's the problem. And I said, you know where the debt goes, a third of it, it's called lifestyle debt. You know how you can tell? Drive through the student parking lot. They got better cars and pickups than the faculty. In Florida, go to the airport just before Spring Break and see who's flying to Cancun or Jackson Hole. Students take on debt, but it isn't all just to pay for this. It's to live a lifestyle that they were comfortable with. When I was there at LSU in 2009, we won the national baseball championship in Omaha. Eventually we had 3,000 students fly to Omaha to see the baseball game. And we packed that old stadium and left field with students. So how did they afford that? Probably took out a loan. That's what they wanted to do. These are smart people. We've allowed a lot of that to go on, and we need to have a more analytically sound conversation about what this means.

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 got 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. It's still a necessary strategy. I actually believe people have worked pretty damn hard to make it work. And I think we're back here looking okay because of that. 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.

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 think now we've got to start tinkering with some, not being radical, but tinkering with some new things to do. I think we need to sit down and say, what, right now what is one of the greatest interests of people out there in the community? Artificial intelligence. I don't know a damn thing about it, but I know we have people who do. Maybe it's time to offer some courses to the community on artificial intelligence. How does it work? What is it about? What's its spread? What's its benefits? And who can utilize it to improve their lives and who might be threatened by it? … And so I think we need to start thinking about that. If it doesn't work, stop doing it and do something else. 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: Then my last question… 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 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. You stereotype accountants as being fairly introverted and very low-key. And they are, because people who have that personality gravitate toward accounting because it fits their personality. 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 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. I think the opportunities are much greater than many people who are here and too close to the heat at the moment to understand that it's out there. I think I can see it because I've been around, and because I'm fresh…. It's an inviting little campus. It's got some really nice nature parts to it. They say it's got some good D3. It's got a community that seems to love it. There's a lot of places where there's tension between the community and the university, and [River Falls] seems to be a community that cares deeply about this place. So 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.