[Music] Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

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Welcome to Lakeland Currents.

I'm your host Todd Haugan.

Our guest for the show today is the President of Bemidji State University.

His name is Dr. John Hoffman and he was on Lakeland Currents shortly after he came to Bemidji last year and led off last season and Dr Hoffman I want to say welcome back to Lakeland Currents.

Todd thanks for having me back.

it's a great to be here.

It's always a great opportunity to be able to to share our story at Bemidji State and at NTC Bemidji's Tech College with the community.

So, appreciate being here.

Well, you've been in the community for about a year, a little over that now actually what are your impressions so far?

What's your experience been like?

Well, so my wife Joy and I we just love Bemidji, we just love it.

I mean it is quintessential Minnesota.

It is arts and athletics.

It's education.

It's the great outdoors.

It's just a wonderful community.

I have to say personally, I've been so impressed with how Bemidji has engaged my wife Joy, invited her in to get involved with some community service and volunteer and social organizations.

That welcoming nature of the community has meant a lot, hasn't hurt that folks have welcomed Jackson our dog as well.

That's a good thing.

Your wife is also Dr. Hoffman.

The Dr. Hoffman as we like to say, yes.

So, she's a higher education professional herself.

She does most of her work consulting right now, leadership consulting for colleges and universities around the country but she's exceptional and is able to do that as many folks are work remotely from Bemidji.

President Hoffman, as as we talked before we went on the air with our show, I'm a BSU graduate so I tend to focus a little bit on BSU which I think is of course a great school, but also NTC is a jewel in the community that many of us overlook.

It really is and so we've been spending a lot of time talking about NTC Bemidji's Technical College helping to, you know, really reinforce that identity in our community.

Programs, the nursing program this year, we had a wait list.

So, the first time that we can remember that happening.

We've seen some great growth in some of our trades programs at the college.

In fact, across all of Minnesota State's institutions, colleges and universities alike NTC has had the largest year-over-year new student growth this year of any of those institutions, almost 35% increase.

So, great, great news for the college.

Why is that?

You know, I'm going to give a lot of props to a couple new leaders at the college.

Dr. Ketmani Kouanchao, she comes to us, she spent much of her youth down in the Twin Cities, went out and worked with the community colleges in California.

She's come back as our Executive Vice President for NTC.

She's hired Nicolle Bieberdorf as our academic Dean, a lot of connections with Sanford, just a critical partner for us.

Part of that connection on that Nursing program for example, but I think together they've just created a more welcoming environment for students as they are coming and visiting campus.

You can see it with our faculty, you know, some of the best around, really that hands-on learning that they engage in.

I think folks are seeing the opportunities, of course, within our Trades, within Nursing.

I haven't met anybody in the community that says "oh yeah I've got more workforce than I need right right now."

That's a continuing issue isn't it?

It is it really is.

Well, there are bumps in the road that happen in higher education it seems and I'm sure it's not exclusive to Bemidji but here locally at BSU and NTC this fall was the necessity for budget cuts.

Why was that necessary and what kind of condition are we in now?

Yes and so you're right across the entire country, state colleges and universities similar to ours have lost enrollment.

At Bemidji State, for example, we've lost almost 30% in enrollment going back to 2018.

You know, there have been a number of factors that would contribute to that but far and away the largest was the pandemic.

You know, one of the things that sets us apart in our recruiting efforts to bring students to campus, they see the lake, they see the woods.

They go downtown and they visit some local shops.

They meet one-on-one with our faculty.

That's where it's just sold.

The pandemic interrupted all of that and so where as a lot of other colleges were, had some effectiveness moving their recruitment online, that was really difficult for us to do and so as we are now coming through the pandemic and getting, moving forward I'm happy to say that among the seven universities, not all the institutions of Minnstate but among the seven four year universities, new student year-over-year growth, Bemidji State number one, that was fueled in particular by nearly 40% increase of students coming from Bemidji High School to the university.

Within 25 miles we're up 42%, within 50 miles we're up 46%.

So, we're doing things to own our backyard to really engage with North Central Minnesota again and I will say that is critical for the region because North Central Minnesota has the lowest, you know, as is some of the lowest college going rates in the entire state.

Again, that workforce, have not met a business person in town that says oh yeah when there's a job opening, I've got a whole bunch of applicants for that job.

We need workforce and it's happy to be filling in some of the space.

So, is the financial picture back where it needs to be?

It's not back but we've certainly made a lot of progress.

So, say that we've cut about $13 million from our expense side of things and that's on a budget of with about $57 million in revenue.

It's a little higher than that this year with some one-time dollars from the State.

We appreciate that.

You know, you might imagine a family that's bringing in $57,000 and all of a sudden having to cut $13,000 from the budget, that's a big change.

So, we can't do it overnight.

We've cut about as deeply as I think we can at this point while still preserving the student experience.

We're going to preserve just about all of our undergraduate majors, some will be repackaged a little bit but we're keeping that experience for our undergraduate students in place and building a foundation where we can grow as a campus and I think that's because the long-term strategy is to address the budget on the revenue side by getting back to some of our historic enrollment numbers.

How is State funding for the University?

Well, I'm very grateful this year, we've had a historic increase in funding from the legislature this year.

We've also had some historic, you know, increases for our bargaining units in terms of compensation.

So, the good news, new dollars coming in from the State.

More good news, we're able to pay our employees a competitive wage and that's an important part that occurs through that bargaining process.

It does continue to put some pressure on our budget and so as a system we're doing some work right now, talking about going back to the legislature.

Demonstrating to them the value of that return on investment in terms of how It's contributing to the Minnesota workforce.

How it is helping to save jobs at our colleges and universities, how it's creating pathways for students, students perhaps who hadn't thought about college in the past to be able to think about college and education and advancing in their livelihood.

Were their budget adjustments necessary at NTC as well as BSU?

Yes, at NTC the scale of the problem was a little bit smaller, that is the good news but I just have to say both NTC and at BSU the employees that we have they chose Bemidji, the Bemidji community, they chose our students, they chose their colleagues.

These are folks who could make more money in other spaces but they made choices to come to be a part of our community as we've had to lay off some employees at both institutions these are some great individuals some of our best.

It's really difficult difficult to do and it also affects everybody else who continues to work at the institution because these were friends and neighbors and we're having to reimagine how we do some of the work.

I will say, I've been impressed with those who are continuing to work even some of those whose jobs are going away, the way that folks have kept students first, it's about the students, it's about what's best for them.

I've not seen that previously in my career the way that I've seen it here and it means a lot.

Well, it's not something you do by yourself as you pointed out so well last time you were here but I mean both schools, these are very big organizations sometimes we forget about how many people make NTC and BSU what they are.

Yes and just some again I cannot say enough about our faculty at both institutions perhaps in different ways, our faculty teach differently.

At NTC they engage in that hands-on education.

They roll up their sleeves.

It's experiential.

It engages students in critical thinking and problem solving but doing it by doing it with their hands and engaging in the work.

It's just great to see that experience and then at the university the faculty have recognized that a lot of our students transfer in, many of our students have had their liberal education experience in high school and so they're doing more to adjust their majors to be organized around these critical thinking and communication and teamwork skills.

The kinds of things that fit into future jobs and future careers that connect ideas from one discipline to the next.

They're special people at our institutions of course they're also supported outside the classroom with some of the best professional staff and student affairs, educators that again I've worked with in my career.

BSU and NTC have stood for inclusion for a long time, before you got here even, was that a factor when you looked at coming to Bemidji and were talking about taking this job and where are we in terms of inclusion at both institutions?

Great questions and absolutely.

I really was anticipating being at my prior institution a little bit longer.

The opportunity in Bemidji, the alignment.

There is one connection of a four-year university and a two-year technical college like this in the State of Minnesota and only a handful across the country.

That was a big draw.

That is its own form of diversity in terms of being able to reach out to a range of students with different types of Interest and abilities, First Gen students, low income students, add in the work with American Indian students, here located among, in the middle of Minnesota's three largest Native American nations that sealed the deal in terms of interest and those partnerships have really been critical.

We advanced this last year Chrissy Downwind into a Vice President role.

She's now the Vice President for American Indian Student Success and our campus Diversity Officer.

We've seen some significant growth as well.

We've had 26% increase year-over-year in our American new student numbers at Bemidji State.

That number at NTC is 80%.

It just almost doubled the number of new American Indian students on the campus.

I think that reflects the fact that we are expanding our American Indian Resource Center at Bemidji State, adding a location at NTC, strengthening our services that we're providing for students to demonstrate that they have a pathway to success and degree completion.

Exciting pieces.

Students of color overall are also up 14% overall, 50% among our black students.

So, we're seeing the future workforce of Minnesota at the college and at the university.

I believe it was during your tenure in California that the achievement gap between students of color and other students narrowed in fact disappeared and we've had an issue with that in Minnesota, an achievement gap.

Is there still one at BSU and NTC?

Well, to be clear there's still one in California.

I was fortunate to be a part of a program that eliminated the achievement gap there and that's a pretty special program and group of colleagues.

Very high on our strategic priority is addressing the achievement gap and all of those gaps, first generation college students, low income students, students of color.

We know that every student who comes to Bemidji State and to NTC has the capacity to succeed, to thrive.

When we see gaps, we know that that means there's something that we're doing that is not helping these students to tap into their full potential and so one of the big things we're doing is Nisidotaading.

This is an a Ojibwe word.

It means mutual understanding and it reflects our way of approaching diversity, equity and inclusion.

Building around the concepts of mutual and understanding.

All students learning from one another.

All students contributing to each other's experience.

It's not being soft on diversity, equity and inclusion.

I mean it's a really aggressive approach but it's framed in ways that are different than I think some of the the things that are often captured in the news because it's about uplifting all of our students and the campus leaders who are doing that Chrissy Downwind, her colleague ,Ashley Gomez.

Some of the other members of our leadership team.

They're doing some really advanced forward-thinking work in terms of positioning us to grow in that area.

President Hoffman, you mentioned a moment ago the possibility of having an AIRC an American Indian Resource Center at NTC.

Is that going to happen and do we need one?

It is happening and we absolutely need one and I think, you know, one of the ways I like to explain this to folks, early in, you know, when I was dating and then early in my marriage I was a part of a couple men's groups.

Pre-marriage I was part of a poker night.

I don't know that that men's group always did the best job of helping me to edify the women in my life.

After early in my marriage, you know, some involvement with a men's bible study, a men's group did a lot of good for me in helping me to edify my wife and other women in my life.

That opportunity to gather with like-minded folks.

Folks in that case men who have a similar experience and have it be facilitated in a way that's about engagement is really critical and so when you look at this Nisidotaading approach and the work of our American Indian Resource Center, yes, it's creating spaces for American Indian students to gather, to draw upon their culture lift up their life experiences, their shared experiences, talk about how the ways that they have overcome challenges throughout their lives are going to help them to overcome challenges at the university and it helps them to engage in programming with the rest of our students in that mutual understanding approach that just really defines how we do diversity, equity and inclusion.

It's exciting work that's happening at the the university and the college.

Is your vision for whatever might happen at NTC to have a separate building for it or could it be within the main building?

I don't know that we see a new building in the near future.

If you know someone who's interested in making that type of investment let's talk.

We're setting up a space within NTC on campus so that there is a dedicated space for the students right there in our main facility.

On campus at Bemidji State, we are one of the few universities across the state and the country even that has a dedicated facility that is, there was some state and city funding but significant support from our tribal nations and helping to make that space a reality and we're also creating spaces for some of our other students on campus so that they can gather and again explore shared experiences and use that as a part of their strategy for succeeding in college.

President Hoffman, you mentioned earlier the growth and enrollment this fall at NTC and BSU and perhaps you touched on it but I think we can't emphasize it enough, one of the reasons that that's happening is because they're both a very good value.

They're an exceptional value.

This is high quality education by faculty who love to teach and that's sadly that's not every college or university across the country but the faculty at Bemidji State and NTC they love teaching.

The value shows up in the quality of the careers and incomes that our graduates earn.

It shows up in the debt that our students don't graduate with.

A third of our students at Bemidji State graduate with no debt Average, the mean debt for students at Bemidji State is $27,000.

That's less than a car.

It's going to appreciate in value.

You can pay for it over a longer time period.

In all these conversations about large debt across the country coming out of colleges and universities less than 10% of our students graduate with debt more than $50,000 and almost all of those students come to us with debt from prior institutions.

So, it's a great value and I'll add the legislature has done what I believe is just some exceptional work with the North Star Promise for Minnesota.

This is going to provide guaranteed free tuition, no fees, no tuition for students any student Minnesota student coming from a family that makes less than $80,000 a year.

Every American Indian individual enrolled in one of our Tribal Nations or at least one quarter American Indian will have free college and then for every student at Bemidji State and NTC, tuition is going to be frozen at already the lowest you know rates in the state.

It's going to be frozen for the next two years to keep tuition down.

This is the best time for folks to look at going to college and unlike so many other scholarships there's no age requirements.

So, 50 years old, 40 years old, 30 years old you want to go back to college, this is available for you.

You want to go back part-time that's okay.

You want to take a one class at a time, you're still going to be eligible for this financial aid.

This could be a game changer for our community in terms of advancing our workforce.

I have a brother-in-law who's a retired college professor and we've had the debate before about what the purpose of higher education really should be.

For him, he said it's about expanding an individual and that's a nice thing but given the cost of higher education, my argument is well I hope though that it translates into a good career of some kind.

Is that still what happens when you get a college degree today?

Yes, I'm a both end person.

Absolutely.

Our graduates need to graduate and need to have access to strong careers that pay well that, you know, are going to help them to support their families.

A lot of our students graduate and go into teaching.

Some go into work at nonprofit organizations and in places where they are, part of their compensation is giving back to children or giving back to their their communities.

Now, I I'd love to see us find ways to pay our teachers more and pay folks who work in these organizations more but these folks still have a solid foundation for their family in terms of the income they're earning and yes, college graduates are less likely to get divorced.

They live longer.

They're healthier.

They have fewer health problems.

They give more money philanthropically in their community.

They volunteer more hours.

They're more likely to vote.

There are just hosts and hosts of outcomes that are associated with getting a college degree that extend beyond that job and so we're about the both and want to make sure that our graduates have access to great careers and that they were developing the whole person so that they can be productive citizens in our community.

John, our time is is coming to an end soon but while we're still chatting here today, while we record the show we still have some exciting fall sports seasons left at BSU, great football program, great soccer program.

We've got our Athletic programs and I don't want to leave out the Arts either.

Our Athletic programs are just there's some great things happening.

Nationally ranked football and women's soccer teams.

We brought back Community Appreciation Night to engage with the community and for our homecoming, you know, a while back here, we sold out the Chet stadium, 3,000 tickets sold, packed that space.

It was a heartbreaking loss but what amazing energy that occurred there.

Volleyball team is doing better.

We're getting ready for basketball.

We had the kickoff with our Icebreaker tournament for hockey.

National stage, the national division, one NCAA hockey started right here in in Bemidji this year and we're excited about the prospects for that team.

Golf team is doing well, just so many great things there and then our music programs, BSU Sings, an online program that our faculty introduced during the pandemic to keep students in high schools and schools singing.

That's now up to 45,000 students who are engaging in that program across the state and beyond.

It's keeping folks singing and that is so important.

At Bemidji State, a student takes just two music classes even if they major somewhere else but they're involved in two music classes along the way they're 50% more likely to graduate.

There's just important outcomes that are associated with athletics, with music and the arts and it's Minnesota, you can't leave out the outdoors.

The great outdoor education programs we have.

We've had to make some difficult cuts in that area but we also have some plans about how we're going to grow and continuing to keep our students engaged with the outdoors.

Exciting times for our students.

President Hoffman what's the best way to find out more about NTC and Bemidji State University?

Well, of course it's our websites Bemidji State is pretty easy bemidjistate.edu.

For those of you who are looking at two years that Nursing program, the Trades - it's NTCmn.edu.

Those are great places to find out about us but of course like I said early on, come visit our campus, come walk across the campus get the feel of the classrooms, talk to our faculty, talk to some other students.

It's that college life and experience that helps to make Bemidji State and NTC really special places.

And, really it's this time of year that people are working on making those decisions for next fall.

Many are, many will make their decisions yet in the spring but I know a lot of folks are making their decisions right now and like I said with affordability, the investment from the state here in the next couple years, it is a great time to look at advancing your education, advancing your career.

Can students usually quickly access their housing at BSU?

Is there usually room?

We have plenty of housing at Bemidji State.

First year students stay on campus unless they are are living at home in the community.

Many students then in their second year move into apartments.

Opportunities to start learning to live on their own but we're also extending some of our family housing options for students because we know that housing as well as the cost of higher education can be a barrier for some and so as we're creating more family housing options when one of the members the families going to college ,we believe that's going to extend access as well in our community.

President Hoffman thank you for joining us for Lakeland Currents.

Oh, it's an honor and a joy.

Thank you so much.

I'm Todd Hogan.

Thank you for watching Lakeland Currents and hopefully we'll see you next time.