(bright music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse".

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll hear music from Rootz Within.

But first, my guest joining us now is the new president of Minnesota State University Moorhead, Dr Tim Downs.

Dr. Downs, thanks for joining us today.

- Happy to be here, John, I love public radio and public TV.

- Well, as we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Well, I grew up on the East Coast as a boy in Maryland and then my dad worked for Caterpillar and we ended up moving around a bit, but ended up in high school in San Diego.

That was a real tough place to live.

But, so I stayed in California for college, I went to Sacramento State University and I was involved in a lot of things in college.

I did some inter-collegiate athletics, but then ended up going to graduate school in West Virginia and the University of Oklahoma.

Kind of ended up with this career in higher ed.

It wasn't planned from my youth, it just kind of evolved and I just love higher education as a space.

So higher education, in order to move up, you have to move around.

So I've been at several universities, but couldn't be happier to be in Moorhead, Minnesota at MSUM.

- Well, great and you've been here how long now?

- I started in July, July 3rd, and then I had a day off.

It was great and then I had one day off and then I had to get, really get to work, but first part of July, so it's really in that learning phase.

- Okay, so how has the transition been going so far?

- It's been great.

The system office in St. Paul does a great job onboarding.

They teach you about the system, you get to know all the vice chancellors and the structure and then they gave me a mentor, one of the presidents in the system.

And then on campus, everybody's just been so, well, they've been outstanding, you know, just so open arms and how can I help and what do you need to know?

'Cause it's just a really interesting process.

You've come to some place, you know it barely through an interview and all of a sudden, wait a minute, now I'm in charge?

Well, it's really, there's a cabinet and then there's a whole loads of people below them at different levels, faculty, staff, administrators and they've all just, you know, sat down and said, here's what we've done, here's where we are, and let's figure out the way forward and it's just been outstanding, yeah.

- You know, you've only been there a few months and, but what do you see as the biggest challenges facing the university right now?

- I think all of higher education is trying to find the right number of students and the student population continues to decline in certain regions.

In the upper Midwest, that's the norm.

We're lucky though, Fargo with its growth, there's families moving here, so there's gonna be generations of students different than other parts of the country.

So it's always finding the right number of students and then making sure you match the students with the degrees that they're interested in and that those degrees also match what the industry is interested in in terms of hiring people.

So it's a process and it's always changing, the sands are always shifting.

- Well, the only constant is change, right?

- Exactly.

- You know, how has higher education especially changed since COVID?

Can you talk about that?

You've been in those... - Oh, COVID, it was a disruptor I think for the world.

Now, we're all getting back to normal.

So we had to go, we had to go online in order to get through that transition till we figured it out and then keep people safe.

And then as we come back, the interesting thing this fall, the colleagues I've talked to from across the country and what we've experienced at Moorhead is the students just wanna be back.

They wanna be live, They've chosen a great regional Master's university, MSU Moorhead, and they want to get interactive, they wanna have a full experience of being on a college campus.

So their attitude is, let's go, let's do this.

So that really energized all of us because they're actually setting the tone of, hey, I wanna go to college and I wanna have a traditional college experience.

So that's how we're leaning into this year and the years that'll follow.

- Yeah, so why do you think MSUM is important to this region?

- Well, if you look at a university, our job is to educate the students, but there's a lot of other things that happen, because if a student's enrolled full-time, they may be in the classroom between 12 and 20 hours a week, depending on if they have labs or not.

But the rest of the time is what you might call less structured time, living in the res halls, getting involved in student government, student life, inter-collegiate athletics, the arts, all the full life experience.

So what's really happening is we're developing these young adults, we're in this human development industry and it's kind of a magical experience.

So as this happens, we're also preparing them for the workforce.

So as soon as possible, we want them to be working and working in a field or an area.

It could be an internship part-time job, summer employment, all those pieces to then fill the gaps of getting them ready to transition into the workforce.

So for me, I'm asking industry, how do we prepare them for what you need?

And it may not be just the degree, it's what they have in terms of knowledge and skills.

So we have to constantly be doing this matching to make sure that when we launch them out into the workforce, the workforce says, absolutely, that's exactly what I need, because what we wanna be, we wanna be an economic driver by providing the workforce that this region needs.

So it's a partnership with industry that we have to work on every day to make sure that we're positioning these students for success and also preparing them to be lifelong learners.

- You know, in recent years, I understand prior to your coming of course to MSUM, the university discontinued some majors and the theater program as well, I believe.

What caused all those changes, do you know?

- Well, one of the jobs that we have to do is you look at every major and you say, how many students are in that major studying?

And we're, as you might guess, we're a business, we have a bottom line.

So if you look at any major and there's too few students or too many faculty and the matching isn't right in terms of ratios, you have to figure out how to fix that.

There's a whole bunch of ways to fix it.

In some cases, you might eliminate a major, which is not the goal of any administrator.

How do you reposition that program?

So one of the things that we're doing November 3rd on campus, we're having this day called humanities day, 'cause the programs that quite often fall into this category are the arts and humanities.

For me, the liberal arts are the most important part of your educational experience.

You learn to think, to write and communicate.

All those things are really important, you understand about the history of the world, all that general education is really critical.

So for me it's how do we position each major for success.

If they don't have enough majors, let's make sure that they have enough courses in the general education curriculum to make sure that the faculty are fully and gainfully employed and busy all the time.

So it's how you position the program in that landscape of the institution is what's real critical.

So I work with the provost and the deans to ask this question all the time.

Is it positioned right?

Do we have enough students?

Do we have enough credit hour production to sustain that program and all the people that work in that program?

So it's an ongoing project, it'll never stop.

I don't want us to become too hyper vocational.

I want people to know about the world and history and the fine arts, to be that whole person.

So it's one of the things that all of higher ed is struggling with right now.

- Sure, you know, as your short tenure now, do you anticipate any more changes, layoffs or academic changes for that matter?

Is it too early to tell or what are you thinking right now?

- We're constantly in the process of evaluating the programs and how many people prescribe and are using that program and then we're also always matching it with the budget.

So that's one of the things that we do every year.

In January, February and March is when really a lot of that data that we're collecting right now coalesces and comes together, so it's an ongoing activity.

I don't think think we're leaning that direction at all.

For me, it's how do we position departments and people for success?

- Yeah, you keep talking about number of students, you know, can you talk about how the enrollment's been the last few years and how it's been this fall?

- The enrollment declined a little bit this fall, that's not unusual for this region.

So what we're learning, because I came in and I said, okay, if it's gonna decline, why?

So one of the things that I've discovered is we have been a little too humble as an institution.

We haven't been telling the story of Moorhead loud enough or long enough or frequent enough for everybody to say, wow, I need to go visit campus, because a campus is there, it sits in a town and there's signs that point you to that direction.

If you don't have a reason to go there, you just drive by and go, I know it's over there 'cause I'm going north on 8th Street and it's just a little bit to the east.

Well, we gotta attract people to come to campus and to come see the campus, meet the faculty who are awesome, meet the staff and just walk around and kind of take in our culture, soak it in.

And when they do that, they come to Moorhead.

So we have to get more people to come to campus to have that Moorhead experience, that dragon pride.

And all of a sudden they say, you know, I think this is on my top three, but before they came, we might've only been somewhere in the top 10 U pick.

So we're gonna be louder in saying, you need to just come visit us because when they do, our visit experience is exceptional, but it mirrors what they will experience when they're a full-time student.

- Talk about your years at Northern State College in Aberdeen, how that prepared you for this job.

- Well, similar, Northern wasn't telling its story as well.

So that's the experience that I got.

And I said, "Well, you can't let people just take a place for granted."

They have to really understand who you are, what you do, what you contribute, all the things they just talked about in workforce development.

When I start to talk about that, just this morning I went to a event that was sponsored by Sanford and it was about what they're doing and how they're growing and being a part of the community.

And my response to them is, yes, and we wanna be your partner as you're developing these programs.

So everywhere I go, that's the conversation I'm gonna have.

I wanna be your partner, how can we help?

We've had great conversations with the mayor and city manager.

Mayor Carlson is real excited 'cause I wanna be an even bigger partner than we already are to raise the boats of Moorhead and the citizens in the industries in this region.

- You know, can you talk a little bit about the importance or challenge of sort of that tri-college system in Fargo, Moorhead area?

- The tri-college conceptually as it was developed decades ago said, if you're a student at one of these three colleges, Concordia, North Dakota State or Moorhead, you know, we want you to have access to the curriculum on the other campuses.

Let's say you're taking your area of study and you get outta sequence and you need this class and Concordia or North Dakota State has it, this passport system would allow you to go there, get the course, transfer it back, it was a seamless transition of those credits.

So it's a real good model and I think that we'll be able to sustain that transfer, portability of credit hours over time.

It's a concept that we're constantly looking at, you know, how do we position it for success and to advance the student 'cause that's who we're all here to serve, - You know, have you had the opportunity to meet with professors and students?

I assume you have, obviously.

What's been your impression?

- Well, what really excited me, in fact when I first came to campus to interview, everybody I met is really dedicated.

You know, that all in mentality.

How do I help my students?

How do I make sure that they're learning?

How do I make sure that they're developing in terms of programming and that maturation process.

So everybody I've met is just so engaged in the learning and human development process.

It's infectious and I'm I'm just excited to be a part of it.

I call myself a servant leader.

You know, I can't be in charge or know everything, but I can kind of guide and facilitate, but they have to inform me about what's happening in their classrooms, outside the classroom, I need to know and the reason why I need to know and have high contact with students and faculty, so when I go out and talk to people in the community, I can tell that story and I can give you case specific stories about students of how we've helped them grow and develop.

That's really heartwarming for people to know how committed and dedicated we all are to our business which is education.

- What kind of key majors do you have there at the university?

- Undergraduate, phenomenal in education.

You know, we started as teachers' college, so that's not a surprise.

We're the best teachers college, I'll just say it in probably 500 miles.

And that's a big statement, but, you know, I believe in what we do and, because when I meet people, they say the teachers that we have from Moorhead are some of the best, if not the best in our schools.

So that's a tradition we won't stop.

We're great in business, criminal justice, nursing, social work, in fact, we have a graduate program now in social work and graduate programs in business, supply chain management, construction management, there's just so many majors, the fine arts, film, English, you know, things that some people think, why would I major in English?

Well, if you're an English major, you can do a lot because you're literate and you're a good learner and you're a lifelong learner.

So the number of majors we have, if I leave anybody out, I'll have to apologize.

I may hear from it tomorrow morning when I go get my coffee, but they're all just outstanding and it's across the board in the fine arts, in business, in vocational areas.

- What about your graduate programs?

- The graduate programs, we have 15 graduate programs and 11 certificate programs, they're outstanding.

If you look at, you wanna be in some area of business, you can do that.

If you wanna be in social work, psychology, counseling, athletic training, across the board.

Really cool thing that we have is you can get a degree, undergraduate and graduate degree as short as five years.

So it's a three plus two or a four plus one model in business and healthcare administration.

Now, those are areas that there's always jobs, especially healthcare administration.

People, you can get that undergraduate and slide right into the graduate program.

As the healthcare systems grow and develop as the region grows, they not only need doctors and nurses, they need people to run the facilities, to run the programs, to be the accountants, to be the people that manage the facilities, to public relations, community relations, I mean, it's a great field and it's an area that we're gonna grow in a major way.

- Where do your students typically come from?

- If you put a dot on a map and said, this is, and I call it Moorhead, Fargo, 'cause you know, we're located in Moorhead and then you drew concentric circles out probably three to 500 miles, it's that nucleus is probably two to 300 miles is our major draw and then we'll also get students though that come to us for special programs or they come as a, on a scholarship for the arts or athletics.

So we get students from other states, California, Nevada, you know, just surrounding states.

- Yeah, well Dr. Downs we don't have a lot more time, but financially, can you talk about the value of MSUM in terms of like parents and students getting bang for their buck, so to speak?

- Absolutely, well one of the, I call it the sweet spot is if you're not too big, let's say your student, faculty ratio is 18 to 25 to 1, then that's this sweet spot where you have high contact with students.

In fact, we're a public that actually looks like and operates like a private.

And guess what?

It's at a public price.

So we're at the perfect nexus of the quality of the experience, the education is outstanding, preparing you for life at a price that is a public price, which, you know, you can't argue with because you want students to graduate with as little debt as possible and we see that as one of our responsibilities.

- 15 seconds, 10 seconds, what's the best part of your job?

- I just love engaging with our people, yeah, 'cause I believe in them and the synergy on campus is just infectious.

- Dr. Downs, if people want more information, where can they go, who can they contact?

- I would go to mnstate.edu and that's our website and it'll tell you who to call and who to contact.

Just drop us an email, call us.

Come be a dragon, we'd love to have you.

- Thanks for joining us today, good luck to you.

- Thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(bright music) Rootz Within is a group of musicians from throughout Minnesota who enjoy sharing their unique style of music with fans around the country.

(bright music) (uptempo music) ♪ I'm all caught up in the life ♪ ♪ That I never thought would come to this ♪ ♪ Getting hot but I'm touch with reality and how it is ♪ ♪ Looking for anything that I can find ♪ ♪ In my life just to pass the time ♪ ♪ Looking for truth but getting caught ♪ ♪ In the lies of the web in my mind ♪ ♪ You feel it in the ways that flow ♪ ♪ You feel it in the ways that flow ♪ (uptempo guitar strumming) (bright music) ♪ I'm all caught up in the state of mind ♪ ♪ That I never, ever wanted to feel ♪ ♪ Stuck in a rot I'm so messed up ♪ ♪ When all I really want is to heal ♪ ♪ This with the question in this life ♪ ♪ And it's why this have to happen to me ♪ ♪ The truth of the matter is in the end ♪ ♪ It's maybe what I needed to see ♪ ♪ Feel it in the ways that flow ♪ ♪ You feel it in the ways that flow ♪ ♪ You feel it in the ways that flow ♪ ♪ Whoa oh yes ♪ ♪ You can feel it in the ways that flow ♪ (uptempo guitar strumming) (bright music) ♪ I'm letting go from the depths of my soul ♪ ♪ I dug my roots into the soul ♪ ♪ This is a song to right my wrongs ♪ ♪ And I'm releasing them today ♪ ♪ So let them go to a positive way so ♪ ♪ And I can be free ♪ (bright music) ♪ Well see what you need to see ♪ ♪ And don't let it go to waste ♪ ♪ When we can come together ♪ ♪ When all I see and strive ♪ ♪ Then we can make it through this life ♪ ♪ And do it so much better ♪ ♪ And if we do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ And do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ Do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ And do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ For separation takes its toll ♪ ♪ Then well I just want you to know ♪ ♪ Exactly what you're feeling ♪ ♪ Well then if every day is the same ♪ ♪ Well then you're letting that go to waste ♪ ♪ Where you can make change ♪ ♪ If we do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ And do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ We do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ And do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ (uptempo guitar strumming) (bright music) ♪ Well see what you need to see ♪ ♪ And don't let it fade away ♪ ♪ We can love each other ♪ ♪ Well then I know that we can thrive ♪ ♪ Then we can make it through this life ♪ ♪ And live it so much better ♪ ♪ And if we do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ And do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ And if we do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ ♪ And do it for the earth and do it for the birds ♪ ♪ And do it for the family ♪ (bright music) - Well that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" for this week and as always, thanks for watching.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.