A Conversation with Steve Young, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at NMU

In this episode of the Rural Insights Podcast, David Haynes sits down to chat with Steve Young, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Northern Michigan University. Topics covered include NMU’s search for a new President, and the various challenges facing higher education and how the board and NMU is addressing those challenges.

In addition to Chairman of the Board of Trustees at NMU, Steve is the recently-retired owner and officer of the Lansing-based lobby firm Governmental Consultant Services Inc. Steve previously served as a Manager of Tax and Regulatory Affairs for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. He was a political science major and Payne Hall resident at NMU in the mid-seventies, and left NMU to work at the State Capitol as Chief of Staff to a Saginaw area State Senator. Steve completed his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Michigan State University.

Mr. Young was appointed to the Northern Michigan University Board of Trustees by Governor Rick Snyder for a term beginning January 1, 2019 and continuing until December 31, 2026. Steve lives in Lansing with his wife Tricia, and has two daughters, Jennifer and Stephanie.

Transcript

David Haynes:

Welcome everybody to another edition of Rural Insights Podcast. Today, I’m delighted to have a friend with me, a friend for many, many years, and a colleague together, and both alumni of Northern Michigan University. Steve and I go back to, I won’t give you the dates, because it’s like the 1800s, but we worked in the Capitol Building together, going back into the 70s. We know each other well. Steve is in the board chair right now. That’s normally a difficult job, but during a presidential search, it’s a very difficult job because you’ve got to balance a lot more pieces. Steve, welcome, thank you for doing this. Tell me where we are with the search and how you’re feeling about the search.

Steve Young:

Sure, and thank you, David. I don’t want … Before I get into that, I just want to thank you for having me here. It’s been, like you said, you and I go way back. We were working in this arena in Lansing for many, many years, and then you went on to different things. I really followed your career. What you’ve done for Northern, you were president up there for us. You continue to be up there on faculty and I want to thank you for that, because I do admire the career you’ve had, particularly at Northern, but also before that, the working for governors, and other things. It’s cool to be able to reconnect with you in this capacity, so thanks. Hopefully, I can be, not a regular guest, but at least on here occasionally with you.

David Haynes:

That’d be great.

Steve Young:

Chat about stuff of interest, but on the search, we’re really excited. This has been quite a process, but a good one, I think. We had a Presidential Search Advisory Committee, made up of 22 members, community activists, faculty, staff, students, some board members were on there, and went through a pretty intense process as you know. I don’t need to tell you about presidential searches. We just recently completed it. That’s why this is timely today, our discussion.

Narrowing the field down, we had 11 candidates. We narrowed it down to four, not yet announced, but they will be coming to campus hopefully next week, which would be the week of the 15th. No, no the week after, or later this week, I’m sorry. They’re actually starting the 15th for some community forum things. Then, we’ll do a board interviews with them, and then make a decision hopefully later this month. The search was in, we did probably 18 hours of interviews with these candidates. I really want to thank our Search Advisory Committee for the work they did on this, because it’s a lot of work and a lot of hours on Zoom, but I think the product is good. I think we got some good options out there.

David Haynes:

Well, I think that’s exciting. That’s great. People will begin to get a feel for the four finalists, and then the board will make a decision at its September meeting, or a special on October, to pick somebody. Would that be a fair thing?

Steve Young:

Yeah, I think so David. It depends, some of it is scheduling at this point, with getting candidates in and working that out. Our ideal situation would be when we’re up there for our board meeting around the 20th, that we stay through homecoming, and we stay till Monday the 26th. Then we would do our board interviews then, after all the community forums are done, and then, of course, hopefully make a final decision that week or early October. Hopefully it’ll be that week sometime.

David Haynes:

Well, great. That’s great, and then the Northern will be ready to move on to, this will be what the 15th, 16th, 17th president of Northern Michigan University, I think, because I think I’m the 14th.

Steve Young:

16 or 17, yes. You were one of them. You were what, the …

David Haynes:

I think I was 14.

Steve Young:

14, yeah, 14, but it’s been an interesting process, but an important one. You know this as well as anybody, this is a decision that’s going to impact Northern and the community for many years to come. We’re not taking this lightly. We’re being as deliberative as we can. In the interim, we have Dr. Carrie Schooling, who’s our president, and done a fantastic job. Luckily, we don’t have that pressure of, “Oh, we got to hire somebody.” We’ve been able to take our time, but at least not be concerned about that aspect of it while we do focus on this. Kudos to carry and her team for stepping up too.

David Haynes:

Yeah, I think Carrie and I were students together at Northern.

Steve Young:

Didn’t know that.

David Haynes:

Yeah, we went to school together and knew each other very well. She’s an exceptionally talented person, so you’re right. Having somebody there with that stability, that intellectual capacity, and knowledge of Northern, as well as being a high level administrator, it’s really, and not only is it good now, but it’ll be really helpful for the new president. You can walk into a stabler situation. Carrie, as you know better than I do, highly respected on campus.

Let’s talk a little bit about the priorities here. We’re coming up. This is lots of interesting things going on in Higher Ed. The lead, of course, that you read a lot about is enrollment problems, not just in Michigan, all over the country. Young people not feeling, maybe in their families, that it’s worth getting a four year degree. The cost of going is really, when you added up, there’s a lot of money, loans, all of that. There are a lot of other issues I’m sure you and the board are talking about. What do you think, from your perspective, the board will want to lead, see happen in the next few years at Northern?

Steve Young:

Yeah. That’s a tough question, but it’s an important one, and one that, as you know since you’ve been involved in this aspect of it, it’s so critical. First and foremost, the top priority, and we’ve talked about that, is getting, onboarding a new president, and getting that setting the table, if you will, for that president to come in and start from day one working on, be on our behalf. That’s the top priority.

Enrollment and retention are so critical and so difficult right now. You look at what’s going on with universities, not just in Michigan like you said, but across the country and smaller high school graduating classes, the coming out of COVID, where you’ve got, remote learning became in vogue more so than it was before. Everybody competing for a smaller number of students. That means the big universities, Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State, are all dipping down into the pools that they never used to dip down into before. We’ve got that. That’s an issue.

Couple other things, David, that are really important. I know you are aware of this, but mental health is a huge issue. We’ve enlisted the help of Jim Haveman, who used to be a trustee, and of course was DHS Director, has a very strong background, and so we hired him to do a mental health services assessment, which we’re in the process of releasing. We have a bunch of recommendations there that we’re working on to improve those services for students. In my view, one student suicide is too many. We should never ever have that, but we do, unfortunately.

Our job, I think is trustees, and I know you would agree with this being on faculty, is our parents entrust their kids to us, to educate them and provide a safe environment for them, and to help them where we can. That’s something we need to take very seriously. That’s why we’re really focused on this mental health aspect of making sure, providing proper services to students, and make sure they have those readily available.

Childcare is another one that we’re looking at. Childcare is a huge issue for us. We have a huge emphasis on that right now, because it’s a recruitment and retention issue. If we’ve got good faculty, but they can’t get childcare, we lose them, the same with students and staff. I was told, David, that the wait list up there is up to two and a half years to get childcare, the early childcare.

David Haynes:

Absolutely, it’s also very expensive. We did a study on Rural Insights, but you’re paying, I think … I’m trying to recall, but it’s almost $700 a month is the average cost per child.

Steve Young:

Yes, per child.

David Haynes:

One child. Yeah. That’s a mortgage payment for a lot of people.

Steve Young:

To us, it’s all part of the recruitment and retention, just like mental health services is, I think. If we’re providing those services, parents feel good about having their child come to Northern. They feel that it’s a good decision, a safe decision. It’s all part of that whole thing, which is still critical to us right now. We’re focused on that.

The other priority, as you know, is we’ve got about a 92 million dollar capital building projects underway right now on campus. Some of us already … If you drive around campus, you’ll see where that’s happening. Making sure we get that, keep that on track. Then finally, one of the things I, as chair of the board, and the board in total is in very much agreement with this is us doing a better outreach, that I think we haven’t done a good job of reaching out to key stakeholders in the community. We’re really working hard to try and improve that.

For instance, just recently we had, when we were up there in, I think it was July for our July meeting, David, we invited the Marquette City Commission to join us, and tell us what they’re working on. We told them what we’re working on, and had lunch with them. That kind of outreach that we want to really start focusing on. I think it’s important. We want to do it with faculty, staff, and students, not just … Those are all key stakeholders that I think we need to do a better job. We’re trying to do a better job communicating with them.

David Haynes:

Steve, I think it’s a great point you made. I think the board’s presence in the community and reach out is really important. I know under some presidents in the past, and during my time as president, the board tried to hold meals in their board outings in the [inaudible 00:12:10] or an Escanaba, it really … People do want to see you all and talk to you. I think that’s a great step out. I think things like the City Commission, we do live in that city, the University does, and to talk to them is a big deal,, and important.

Steve Young:

We’re all in this together. Some of the feedback we got, David, obviously we went through a difficult contract negotiation a while back. We got it squared around. We got a five year agreements out there. We got some stability, but some of the feedback we got, about that, dealt with some of that outreach and communication. Through this whole process of interviewing candidates for president, a lot of them talked about trust, and the importance of trust in a campus setting and really any setting, but particularly in a campus setting. I think that we had some of those issues, some of those trust issues. I think we have an opportunity to correct that and turn that battleship around. I’m committed to it. I know the board is. We’re not going to flip a switch, as you know. You worked in Lansing. You know how relationships are, but we’re committed to working on that.

David Haynes:

Do you think we have a hope here of increasing state support for Higher Ed? We’ve suffered through some really hard hits over the years, and you all have had to balance that. Tuition goes up because state aid goes down. In the late 70s, I think it was, state aid was 75% of the cost of your tuition, and the parents’, student was 25%, some number like that. It’s rather dramatic flip flop. It’s flipped now. It’s 25% somewhere in there, state aid. Is there any chance that’ll happen, or are things, the economy, too tenuous that won’t be for a while?

Steve Young:

Yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s a steep hill to climb. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to climb it and we are, and we will. We’ve talked to that with candidates that may end up here on a campus, the importance of going in and fighting for those dollars. I think that unfortunately, and you know this, because you were in this world for many, many years. Right now, I think there’s an anti Higher Ed bias in the legislature, and I’m generalizing. I can’t get in trouble for generalizing. I’m thinking overall it’s more emphasis on K12, and the thought being well, they can raise tuition and if we reduce state dollars, they can raise tuition to make up those dollars. That’s true, but it’s not a good way to run a battleship either. I think we need to look at that.

The other thing, the other part of that too, is being more aggressive in trying to find dollars outside of that process, through donors and that kind of thing, to try and be more aggressive in that area, which is something we need to do as well. Unfortunately, being a university president, and don’t need to tell you this, that’s a big part of the job, probably even more so now than it was 10 years ago.

David Haynes:

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Well, I think I told you, we wouldn’t keep going longer than 15 minutes or so. I think everyone is … The other big challenge ahead of the University is, and I had to do it, is hire a new AD. Forrest Carr, who I hired, is leaving. Now you’ve got a really well known interim, Rick Comley, who led our hockey team to a national championship and is well known on campus. The new president will have a lot of those challenges and staffing needs. I think everyone, and your last comments about Higher Ed and cost … Families, there’re challenges, it’s severe for working families, to put their kid through school. I mean through the university, it’s just obvious, but it’s also something, like we said, when you add that into families with childcare and others, these are all big challenges before. The other question in closing is will the Lions go to the Superbowl?

Steve Young:

Well, I think the last time they won a national championship, I was born. People could tell by looking at me that was a long time ago. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m going to go there, David. Yeah. We can always hope though, right?

David Haynes:

We can always hope. We can hope that they in the pack have a … If, for all the UP, for folks that don’t watch this, the UP is split in between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers.

Steve Young:

Yeah.

David Haynes:

It’s … One interesting story about that is the people often ask, and I ask, why is the Northern colors, the green and gold, the same as the Packers? A zillion years ago, I think, I don’t remember. I think in the 50s, or before, they actually wanted new uniforms, and the Green Bay Packers donated uniforms, old uniforms there.

Steve Young:

Oh yeah.

David Haynes:

That’s how they … Now that’s according to people in the athletic department. That’s what they told me, but it’s a great story. Even if it isn’t true.

Steve Young:

We’re going to run with it. I like it. It’s good. I know most people in the UP, they don’t care about the Lions and I get they like the Packers, but those of us that are trolls from down state, it’s an annual thing, but who knows? We can always hope. Hope springs eternal.

David Haynes:

Well Steve, thank you. I’m heading down to Lansing this week and maybe I’ll see you around town, but I’d love to do this again in a few weeks, after the search, and later November. You and I’ll get back on and talk about some more about Higher Ed and Northern, how’s that?

Steve Young:

Anytime, just shoot me a note and we’ll get something on the books, David.

David Haynes:

Thank you very much for doing this. I really, really appreciate it.

Steve Young:

Thank you. Thanks.