Interview With Dr. Michael T. Marsden

where the government’s documents were well in place, and they are just about as specific as is amaster agreement. But the process is different, in other words, in a master agreement what youhave is the AAUP Executive Committee, in particular the person the Grievance Officer, adds alayer of discussion to any action. That doesn’t apply to a charter arrangement. So for example,the Senate at Bowling Green is extraordinarily powerful. By contrast the Senate here hasauthority and power, but I suspect, I would venture to say the power is share between theAcademic Senate and the AAUP Executive. That’s my read of the current environment. So,whereas under a charter system you really don’t have that fixed hierarchical structure. Well, overthe years, when I came into the College of Arts and Sciences it was pretty obvious to me that acouple of things needed to be done, rather than just One of the things I think is that the collegewas not operating as a college. I think it was operating as a series of independent departments.The general flavor of things was that what departments wanted, we would put forth. I came intoa situation where I didn’t accept that. I didn’t necessarily include that because the department itwas bigoted; it might have been quite good. But I tried to introduced to concept of college baseddecisions rather than just department based decisions. I would question, for example, gradechanges, which apparently had historically not been questioned. If it had been, it wasn’t theroutine to be questioned. I began to question lots of activities, but again that’s the naturaltendency of someone coming in from the outside, they ask “why is it being done this way” and“what can we do maybe to improve that.” I think the thrust was to focus on trying to get somequality control in that reserve, quality control measures in place and also to encourageprofessional development. That was really easy, it really needed a lot more attention. It waspretty clear to me that professional development, there was plenty money to do that wasn’t theproblem. But there wasn’t much emphasis on professional development of faculty and staff. Oneof the things that I think we did do in the last seven years, was institute an enhanced program ofdevelopment for faculty but we also created a program for clerical staff and professional staff.Which had never existed. Then we also created a nice network of support for students’professional development. We did that of course by fundraising, again that would have beendone in a college, so we now have a telemarketing campaign which is very successful. Last year,apparently we just raised close to 60,000 for the college. Over the period of my seven years thetelefund has raised about a quarter of a million dollars to support students and this comes fromalumni. In order to bolster that support we came up with idea of the newsletter which we’ve beenpublishing about twice a year, and that goes out to all the alumni that give us money, all thedonors and friends of the college. Also to people on campus. So that newsletter helps reinforcethe idea that the money we get from alums goes back to help students. Apparently it’s working,as in alums are now understanding, very clearly by way of example, how the money they giveinfluences the quality of education that student receive. So that’s gone well. We’ve, one thingthat I didn’t accomplish and that was always a goal, though I never got around to it, because Iwas never sure that I had a good agenda for it. I wanted to develop a National Advisory Councilfor the college, I wanted to get that done and that still has yet to be done. I suspect I delayed inpart, I’m not a person who puts things off if I think they need to be done. So my reflection onthis would suggest that the reason I didn’t move forward faster was I didn’t think that ourdevelopment work was in place yet and I don’t think we had a significant agenda for them todeal with, because I don’t want to put together a National Advisory Council and give them

nothing to do of substance. Yet I don’t want them to come together and tell me what programswe need to offer in the college, now they could give me some advice but we can’t let an outsidegroup dictate the curriculum, the curriculum belongs to the faculty. They can comment on it andthey can give us some suggestions, but I think we have to be careful that we don’t lead them tobelieve, as a National Advisory Committee or Council, that they’re in charge of the curriculum.That would be a mistake. The other thing we put a lot of effort on, a lot of time into is idea ofinterdisciplinary programs. Both for teaching a research. That’s why when I joined NorthernMichigan, the College of Arts and Sciences did not have any centers within it. Now it has three.The Seaborg Center of course already existed, but it wasn’t within the College of Arts andSciences. So when in my first year here, that was switched from Academic Affairs to the Collegeof Arts and Sciences. And so then I became responsible for that and that’s when the director atthat time, Phil Larson, stepped down and we had a national search for a new director that isPeggy House. So that center came into the fold, and out of that center came the idea for othercenters. As you probably know better than I would, one of the things that President Vandamentand I came to include was that the culture of the Upper Peninsula in fact is distinctive, and isunique. We’d love at least the idea, with discussions with you and others, that a Center for UpperPeninsula Studies would make good sense. So that became the second center. The third center ofcourse was directly related to the university’s mission to work more closely with NativeAmerican communities, and that is to establish the Center for Native American Studies and nowwe have that in full form. These centers exist, by the way, in the case of the Seaborg Center wehave our master’s programs. They can offer curricular opportunities that are not traditionallyoffered through departments, they can offer research opportunities that are not traditionallyoffered through departments and so on. The other parallel piece of this is that I pushed from dayone the idea of joint appointments between departments and centers, centers and centers,colleges, across colleges and so on. For a couple of years there we had what are called“temporary joint appointments” well I guess it depends in the time it went on two years, threeyears. But these last couple of years we’ve been very fortunate to get permanent jointappointments. The first two being the joint appointment that currently exists between biologyand geography, the bio-geographer. Then the one that exists between the Seaborg Center and theMathematics and Computer Science Department, the Math Education person. And we’re gonnahave others, I think in the future. So that’s the direction that the college began and I think we’llcontinue to move there.RM: Certainly.MM: We’ve haven’t ever gotten to really foster interdisciplinary teaching outside of the HonorsProgram. So the Honors Program of course is not within the College of Arts and Sciences. Butit’s the one place on campus where we can see regularly scheduled courses that are team taught. Iwould like to see more of that in the college in the future, if that’s at all possible. The other thingthat we began to do when I came into the college office, which was profound in a way, was tooperate a decentralized budgeting system. Prior to my arrival, and it had nothing to do with me,the institution was very centralized. Bill Vandament decided to decentralize it. Unfortunately,decentralization occurred simultaneously with all the budget cuts. So for four of my first fiveyears we were in budget cut situations left and right. So decentralization was meaningless in a

way because you have it, and now you don’t have it. What kind of an argument [laughter.] Sowe’re now just beginning to get to a point financially where we can indeed look at betterarguments for keeping certain money at the college level so we could do good things with it.Another important thing that happened budgetarly was summer school became interpreneurial.That is, we went to the interpreneurial model for summer school, and it made all the difference inthe world. It allowed departments to plan summer school better, and to then make money for thefact. We came up with a system were the college received 1/3rd and the departments 2/3rds of allthe profits. The college would then bail out departments that maybe had a troublesome summerin one way or another, at least up to 1500- 2000. Beyond that the departments would have topay back that debt, but the college had some flexibility there to sort of help out somedepartments that might have had a bad year. Overall, the interpreneurial model for summerschool brings in about 80,000- 100,000 every year for us. The other really budgetary successstory I think is I lobbied hard, I mean as hard as I’ve lobbied for anything on the matter ofequipment, because capital equipment is a real problem and still is in the College of Arts andSciences. So we developed this idea of a capital equipment list, a five-year list which we nowkeep current every year. That list is used to lobby for increased funding, and right now there’sabout 500,000 a year being set aside for capital equipment, okay? That’s supposed to reach amillion dollars, every year in other words a million dollars would be available. I think thatbudget pilot, that line budget item is there in part because of our effective lobbying on the behalfof our science departments in particular because they needed a lot of support, still do. But we’remaking real progress in this first go around on the capital equipment, Arts and Sciences got2/3rds of that, because we had the arguments and we had the plans, we had it all really well. Thecollege has come a long way in other ways in terms of planning, because we now have five yearplans for technology, five year plans for staffing, five year plans for equipment.RM: Now is that on the college level?MM: On the college level.RM: And also on the departmental level?MM: On the departmental level, on the college level, these things are all there. So we’re, if thenewer administration coming into the college level has some real planning documents to workwith. The other thing I did Russ, which was a little bit different, was I decided to use the Artsand Sciences Council, which is after all the elected faculty council much more fully than it hadbeen in the past because in the past the college council was used for promotion, tenure, andsabbatical ranking, you know that was it. They didn’t seem to have any other function. Well Idecided early on that I needed a budget committee, a committee that would advise me onbudgetary matters, particularly when we’re facing all these cuts.RM: Oh yeah.MM: So I put together a budget council comprised of the elected people, Arts and SciencesCouncil, and four department heads that I chose. So we brought these people together and theybecame the advisory group for the dean in terms of that, and that was the first time that it everhappened and it was very helpful to me. But I’ve continued to use that model even until this year

when I had to come up with various five year plans and various approaches. What you find isthose planning committees are reluctant to really make the hard calls, because in a sense it’s verydifficult for them. But they are very good at giving you the criteria by which the calls can bemade. So what they’re good at is really fostering a clear statement and understanding of whatgood criteria are for making selections, making priorities. So that was a good innovation.Another major thing which occurred shortly I arrived, I started asking about the university pressbecause as a graduate student I was using publications that came out of here for some of mywork so I knew it existed. I was told well that was suspended due to budget problems and so on.So I looked in the matter and found out that was true that it was just sitting over there inuniversity relations I guess at that point. So what I did was talk to Phil Beukama and he and Italked about it, and he arranged for that to be shifted from where it lie in a suspended animatedstate, or state of suspended animation, and then brought it over to the Arts and Science Collegewhere as you know, through the good work of a whole host of volunteers we were able to bring itback to life. Over the time since we’ve resurrected it we’ve published about four titles and we’velet one or two, one more for sure maybe two. That was a nice thing to do for the university andfor the college, I think in terms of scholarship. I have put a lot of emphasis on professionaldevelopment for the faculty. I think it’s, I’m proud of that. I think that what happened ishistorically there was a de-emphasis on it, and I think what we’ve tried to do is establish abalance. Arguing that we’re not ever going to be a research institution, we’re not intending to beone. This is a regional, comprehensive, undergraduate, primarily undergraduate institution andselective graduate programs. What I argue is that you can’t be a good teacher unless you’re alsoa good scholar, the two are complimentary. I think there had been a dichotomy developed overthe years that teaching and scholarship were not connected and I think that is what, that’s partlywhat I’ve worked the hardest on is to get that misunderstanding clarified. The main thing, themain challenge of this job has been to get the college to think like a college, to think like a unitinstead of all these series of separate departments. I think department heads, when the pinch wason budgetarily, staffing wise whatever, the departments heads have been able to come throughbeautifully as a team . Their cards were down, and they had to make that decision “do weanty up or get out?” They were always there with the right advice, they were very bold about thatand that was good. What else developed I think a good relationship in the sense that, I don’t takemyself too seriously and neither do they [laughter.] It’s just as well I think that we keep a goodsense of humor about what it is we do. Is that, does that give you a good overview?RM: Okay, now I have some of the questions here. One of the things I’d like you to go back tobecause it was something I stumbled across, something you did, your dissertation was on HenrySchoolcraft.MM: Yes.RM: Could you just talk a little bit about that?MM: Yeah.RM: Also comment on, didn’t you also do a very lengthy article for the Smithsonian Book onNative Americans?

MM: Yes, we did. Native Americans on film.RM: On film?MM: Yeah. And my dissertation was on Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a 19th century Americanethnologist who of course lived in Sault St. Marie and ran the agency there. You probably knowas much about him as I do. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was a bit of a scoundrel, but he was also anadventurer, explorer, you know always looking for an opportunity. He wanted to be the head ofthe Bureau of Mines, that’s really what he wanted but never got that appointment. So GovernorCass, he wrote a campaign biography for Governor Cass of Michigan when Cass was running forthe presidency. Anyway Schoolcraft had the local connections and essentially got assigned to theSault St. Marie agency. Basically Schoolcraft spent his time collecting and dieseling a lot ofethnographic information about Native Americans. Some of which was accurate, some of whichwas not. The most important point though is that Schoolcraft was the source of virtually allinformation about Native American life and culture that has been infused in American literature.He was the single most important source for Longfellow, for a whole host of other writers,Thoreau. So which when you’re looking at Schoolcraft, is a very interesting kind ofsourcebook . So my dissertation was a critical addition of his personal memoirs, which werehuge so I edited them with annotations and so on, it was a lengthy introduction placing his workin terms of its influence on American literature. It was profound, profound influence onAmerican literature.RM: Now was that, you had it published?MM: No, I tried several times but they said it was too long, it was too complicated. MichiganState Press was interested in it at one point. But what I did published was the criticalintroduction. That was published in Northwest, oh what was it called came out by MiamiUniversity it was Northwest publishing or it was a historical.RM: Northwest Ohio Quarterly?MM: No it wasn’t call Northwest Ohio, it was called. I’m trying to find it let me see if I can findit, it should be on my resume. Gosh I should know that, that was one of my earliest publications.Let’s see if I can find it real quick. Northwest right! The Old Northwest.RM: That’s what it’s called.MM: So I published that in The Old Northwest. Anyway, so but Henry Rowe Schoolcraft hasremained a fascination for me, I mean really quite a good one. The fact that I’m up here is, in thisarea that he traversed, and I gathered that Schoolcraft actually named Sugarloaf Mountain overthere, they had given it a different name at one time or it was called something else. You gothrough Schoolcraft County. I remained interested in Schoolcraft because he was such a complexman, I mean here was a man who was married to woman who was half Chippewa. Yet whoseemingly distained from Native Americans except as a source of information. So it was hard toreally completely understand him, and he was successful later in life! He had a couple of, I guessreal estate schemes that didn’t work and all sorts of other things. But eventually got Congress togive him 150,000, a princely sum I might say for the 19th century, to do his six volume history

of Native Americans. So that was interesting. Then the other thing I did for the Smithsonian,Jack Nachbar, my colleague from Bowling Green and I, we both co-edit the Journal of PopularFilm and Television for a good number of years. He and I were contracted to do an article for theSmithsonian’s handbook of Northern American Indians that dealt specifically with NativeAmericans on film. Now, you gotta think about this because I mean we did this about 1973,somewhere in that range. We went to the Library of Congress and we spent an entire week, 8hours a day or more depending on how long they would let us stay there, viewing films on theseold steam back editing machines. I mean unbelievable, I came out of there so groggy I couldn’tstand up. I mean that was the only way to go back and look at some of these early films, becauseyou couldn’t get them any other way. I mean you couldn’t get it on video tape, you

Interview with Dr. Michael T. Marsden Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Northern Michigan University . They sent me a personnel form, I had just sent them my entire resume and all the other material and they sent me this personnel form, which every new employee is asked to fill . Phil’s approach