(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we hear music from The Cropdusters but first joining me now is recently retired president of North Dakota State University, Dr. Dean Bresciani.

Dr. Bresciani, thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thank you, it's a treat - You know, even though a lot of people know, tell us a little about yourself, maybe where you're originally from and your background.

- Well, it is a great question John, because it's relevant to why I'm here.

Was the first of my family to have the opportunity to go to college.

My father was the first English speaker in his Italian immigrant family raised very modestly, which is code for we were dirt poor in central part of California.

As I said, first in my family to go to college.

My father was not supportive of me going to college because that's where those sorts of people go.

He said, "Once you flunk out, "you can come back here and get a real man's job."

So I've been a terrible letdown for him that I never came back to the ranch but I think my parents are pretty happy with how things turned out.

- I would say they probably are.

You've been, I guess off the job as president for maybe a few weeks now, with president David Cook coming in.

Looking back over your 12 years, what are you most proud of?

- Well, there are a number of things that lead up to the big one.

The first is that in an environment across the nation where we're losing millions of students from going to college, NDSU's freshman classes have been going up for the last two years, we're close enough to the fall semester I can say, three years which is extraordinary, but what's really important in North Dakota is that these are real live bodies.

They're not online students who don't live in North Dakota.

These are young people that are coming here, most of them are graduating, well over 90% are graduating and when they cross the stage they can tell you where they're gonna work and what day they start.

North Dakota desperately needs that.

We've become the largest university in the State by several thousand students.

We're putting more people in the workforce.

That's extraordinary.

We increased our research productivity to levels that no North Dakota university has ever been at before.

A number of years ago, we became one of the top 100 public research universities in the nation through the National Science Foundation.

We reestablished Carnegie R1 ranking recently.

It's the second time during my tenure we've done that.

That's the top 149 public and private universities in the nation, an extraordinarily elite successful group.

Again, the only one to do that, that spurs and catalyzes more opportunities for research, more opportunities for scholarly success that lead to business diversification.

Pretty exciting on that front.

We've been able to take a campus that was worn out and I mean crumbling and transform it into a campus with new high functioning buildings.

We've got deferred maintenance in half.

Most presidents don't get excited about replacing the sewer system, doesn't go on the resume.

But when your sewer system fails, guess what's happening?

The rest of the university fails and so we've done a lot of things like that that will be investments in the future success of NDSU.

And those all ultimately lead to us becoming the school of choice for in-State students, the school of choice for out-of-State students, a place where faculty and staff from around the country are interested in moving to in a vibrant city that we work in partnership for, and at the end of the day NDSU, I believe has a big role in changing perceptions around the country of the entire State of North Dakota, because you've got this high functioning top tier research university, you've got a phenomenal athletic program that you see on national television all the time and people start looking, this isn't just about NDSU.

They look at Fargo differently, they look at the State of North Dakota differently and that's good for everyone we serve.

- I'll get back to some of those subjects a little bit later, but tell the viewers out there about what are you gonna be doing now and I guess you are gonna be a tenured professor at NDSU?

- Yeah, I have two classes I had had toyed with already to make sure I could still be effective in the classroom.

No president teaches, I did.

Because I wanted to make sure that that was something I could do successfully.

One was higher education finance, not a lot of faculty lined up to teach that one and the other one was organization and administration of higher education.

That was a course I had taught before at Texas A&M.

Those courses went phenomenally, as a matter of fact, my wife said, "I can tell what nights you've taught, "because you come home and you're excited, "you're happy, you're smiling.

"You don't come home like that every night anymore."

And so that demonstrated to me that I could be effective in the classroom and reestablish a research portfolio.

We'll also add two other classes to that, one on the contemporary college presidency and another kind of a pet favorite topic of mine, the history of American higher education.

For me to get caught up and deliver those classes the way I want to will take a lot of background reading and preparation.

So I do have a sabbatical to get that work done to develop the syllabuses for those courses and have those, my goal is for them to be nothing but some of the best courses in the entire college.

- Okay, you mentioned, well you said that university presidents don't teach.

What does a university president president do?

And what's your most important duties in your opinion?

- I don't know a more delicate way to put it than say juggle chainsaws.

You have 14,000 students, you have 3000 faculty, 6,000 staff, you have legislators, you have municipal leaders, you have alumni, you have donors and they all have a really strong opinion on what ought to be happening at NDSU.

Most of the time those opinions aren't exactly lined up, they're going in competing directions and so when I say juggling chainsaws, there are a lot of mistakes you can make if you miss one, and so you have to be juggling competing constituencies of extraordinarily large influence on the university and on you personally and do that successfully and it's, I think, the big reason why there are very few presidents that last 12 years at a research university.

As a matter of fact, I believe I'm the most tenured in the upper half of the United States.

I'm not saying that that's some special trait I have, it just means I was able to keep those chainsaws juggled a lot longer than most people.

I think the average now is three to five years for research university presidents, so I feel pretty good about dodging the bullets for 12.

- You know, but as you're talking about, every high profile job comes with controversies.

Your job evaluation cited eroded research standing, declining enrollment and certain hiring practices.

Can you comment on any of this and as to why the State Board of Higher Education didn't renew your contract?

- You know, that remains a curiosity to me.

All the things you just listed have been unquestionably proven and accurate.

So those weren't the reasons, but I have never heard the reason why and it's a curiosity to me, it's a curiosity to a lot of people who are very frustrated.

NDSU on any measure of higher education I can think of, is leading the State and excelling so it wasn't a performance issue and it would've been nice if the board had chosen to share candidly what their reasons were.

They don't have to and they didn't and I have to accept that.

- Well, as you move on to a next chapter in your life, different things I still wanna talk about and some different stories I'd like to hear from you, can you talk about the In Our Hands capital campaign?

- Yeah, the In Our Hands campaign really was a success at extraordinary levels beyond what I would've even imagined.

When we first started talking about that campaign, we felt very comfortable raising 300 million but ah, it wasn't gonna be enough so we edged up to 350 and then we finally settled on a goal of $400 million.

Lo and behold, a few years later, a year before it was supposed to be over when we hit $586 million.

We decided to stop at that point.

I suspect we would've coasted past 600 million if we'd kept going.

But what that says to me is that those things I started our conversation today with really do matter to people.

Increasing enrollment, increasing research productivity, increasingly attractive campus, success in athletics and changing the nation's perceptions of NDSU.

Our donors clearly got more enthusiastic, more excited and more engaged than even I had imagined.

But they didn't do that because they were bored, they didn't do that because they looked at the bank account and said, "Oh I've saved up too much money."

People invested their lives and their wealth and their futures in NDSU because they're excited about what's going on.

No campaign in the history of the State of North Dakota, not just higher education, for anything, has ever come close to that grand total of the campaign and it really is a testament that people are recognizing what we're doing and they want want us doing more of it.

- Well, that one said, the horns-up sign.

(Dr Dean laughing) How did that come about during your tenure?

- Well, a lot of universities I've been at have some sort of hand signal and particularly, the Texas universities and I was coming from Texas A&M where before you even say hello, you say "Gig em" and you put your thumbs up and when I first got here, the young man who was the student body president, Kevin Black, who was a very successful businessman and might not now, I said, "Kevin, do we have a hand sign?"

He goes, "Well, there's this horns thing that nobody uses."

I said, "Kevin, we've got to have that become a thing."

We need to start building traditions.

We need to start building ways that I can connect with somebody even if I don't know them and that is exactly what happened.

And just flying back in last night, Minneapolis airport had at least five or six people go by me and go, "Go Bison."

It's a ubiquitous shared experience.

Again, you don't have to know the person but it has become an automatic interpersonal reaction that's just really fascinating, great merchandising.

You can't find a t-shirt shop that has Bison stuff without at least one of 'em having the horns up.

The ultimate ironic compliment is that when we play the university of North Dakota or South Dakota State, all their students do the horns down.

They don't have their own hand sign so they have to use ours and make a joke out of it.

I take that as actually meaning that we've penetrated even those marketplaces with our horns up.

- I hadn't thought of it that way, but depending on who you talk to sports success is either important or trivial, but how much do you attribute Bison success and how important it is in terms of how people really view, and you're already talking about it in NDSU.

Is that what made the difference?

- Absolutely, whether it should be or shouldn't be important, it is important and we're fooling ourselves if we suggest otherwise.

There's nothing that would happen at NDSU that would get us coast to coast national television coverage at the level that athletics does and that the frequency athletics does and it was part of the original national change of perception.

When an ESPN game day comes here and draws one of their largest audiences and comes back here a second time and at the time drew its largest audience in a city and at a university of relatively modest size compared to some of the places they go, that changes people's perceptions, and the athletic program and the breadth of its success on the athletic field is stunning and impressive and one of the top 10 in the nation for the last probably 10 or so years, but what's even more exciting is our athletes are also our best students.

All of the teams have over 3.0 GPA every semester for the last half dozen years, somewhere between 60 and 80 of those student athletes have 4.0 GPAs.

When I tell my colleagues around the nation that, even my Ivy league colleagues will say, "You must have that wrong, that's not even possible."

Well, it is possible because of the sort of student athletes we bring here.

They come disciplined, they come focused to not just be good at athletics but be good in the classroom, and that's the sort of coaches we bring.

Coaches are looking for a disciplined athlete with strong athletic skills.

They can coach 'em up to excellent levels, but they've gotta have the young person who has the discipline to succeed and that's exactly how our program has been so successful for so long on so many fronts.

- Can you talk about the possible move to the FBS versus the FCS?

Might that happen or is it too complicated?

- No, it's a question again, in every conversation.

Are we interested?

Sure.

Are we interested in doing that come hell or high water?

Absolutely not.

What we're seeing across the country is the unsustainable nature of FBS football at most schools.

They're having to subsidize it at extraordinary levels, oftentimes with indefensible student fees.

We refuse to do that.

If we're going to do it, it has to be a break even proposition.

We're not gonna invest more in our athletic program than we currently do, and we actually invest the least of any of the three leagues that we're in and we like it that way.

We think that's appropriate, that's where college sports should be.

So we would need a league that participation in it would provide revenues back to us that would balance out the cost of being in that league, preferably a league where our fans could still go to games and see our young people competing.

That starts narrowing it down to a league to the West or league to the East pretty quickly.

We haven't had that offer yet.

If we did, we'd have to be prepared for it and we have prepared for it, but I don't predict that's going to happen and we're having so much success at the level that we're at that we don't need FBS, it'd be an exciting new challenge, but it's not something we need to be successful.

- Yeah, so if you could do it all over again, would you?

- In a heartbeat, in a heartbeat.

I had a full head of hair and it was a different color back then, but in hindsight, this was the job that I had prepared for my entire career, to be able to come to an institution that had the potential to be nationally recognized and nationally ranked but just didn't quite have the tools and know-how to get there.

We've gotten there and that's not just me, I'm just holding onto the rudder, but I knew which way to turn the rudder.

And we've experienced some phenomenal success, obviously that no other university in the State has and very few in the entire Upper Midwest have.

Our peer is the university of Minnesota, not a bad peer.

That's a school that's four to five times bigger, much better funded, but we're in the same ranking and category as them, and they still won't play us in football, so.

(Dr. Dean laughing) - Can you talk about finalizing your estate and about giving to the university?

- Yeah, it was an easy decision for me.

As I just mentioned, NDSU and the State of North Dakota gave me the opportunity to apply everything I had collected throughout a 36 year career and have it have an impact that changed the future.

I could have stayed at Texas A&M, very few people ever leave that, it's an intoxicating environment, but was Dean Bresciani going to change the future of that university or that state?

No, I would be a part, but a very small part, of keeping an extraordinary thing going.

Here I was able to come and be a part of changing the trajectory of the university, changing the trajectory and the visibility of the State of North Dakota.

It's every president's dream come true, to be able to say that they accomplished that.

Very, very few have the opportunity to, and when I realized what we had done, how successful we are, I needed to say thank you, and I couldn't think of anything else, any organization or interest that I'm more passionate about than NDSU.

So it was really ultimately an easy decision.

What else would I leave my estate to other than the place that let me fulfill my life dream?

- Well, we wish you the best in your new chapter, but if people want more information, where can they go?

- Contact university relations at NDSU, it's on the website, you can look it up in the telephone book.

That's the best place to send questions so that they get sorted to the right experts.

- We are out of time but thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thank you, John, it's always a pleasure.

- Stay tuned, there's more to come.

(gentle music) The Cropdusters are a rotating cast of local musicians from the Fargo-Moorhead area, who perform sets in varying combinations of instruments and musical genres.

(guitar music) ♪ Heading east from Tennessee ♪ ♪ Mountaintops floating in the breeze ♪ ♪ Sun so bright, soon came the night ♪ ♪ Knuckles white as fog in my headlights ♪ ♪ I was high end trailin' ♪ ♪ High end trailin' ♪ ♪ High end trailin' ♪ ♪ Was driving round the mountaintop ♪ ♪ Thought I'd stop at the town down the road ♪ ♪ Was looking for a woman true ♪ ♪ Put her name in wood in Dango ♪ ♪ I was high end trailin' ♪ ♪ Red lights down the road ♪ ♪ High end trailin' ♪ ♪ Don't care where they go ♪ ♪ Or where they may end ♪ ♪ It's better than where I've been ♪ ♪ Lost a game but I played anyway ♪ ♪ One more day to swim among the clouds ♪ ♪ Took a moment to leave and breathe again ♪ ♪ Listen to all the sweet sounds ♪ ♪ On the road, we're mountain-bound ♪ ♪ I was high end trailin' ♪ ♪ High end, looking down on the town ♪ ♪ The lights were bright, the streets were singing loud ♪ ♪ One last call for alcohol ♪ ♪ The music's over, please get the hell out ♪ ♪ I was high end trailin' ♪ ♪ Red lights down the road ♪ ♪ High end trailin' ♪ ♪ Don't care where they go ♪ ♪ Or where they may end ♪ ♪ It's better than where I'm now ♪ ♪ High end trailin' ♪ ♪ Red lights down the road ♪ ♪ High end trailin' ♪ ♪ Don't care where they go ♪ ♪ Or where they may end ♪ ♪ It's better than where I've been ♪ ♪ It's better than where I've been ♪ ♪ It's better than where I've been ♪ (guitar music) ♪ I've found me a place to rest ♪ ♪ I've found me some time to catch my breath ♪ ♪ Every time I go out on the town ♪ ♪ Beaten up, you'll never guess where I've been ♪ ♪ You're so hard ♪ ♪ You're so hard to be around ♪ ♪ Please tell me, what's the circumstance ♪ ♪ North can't be no rest like finance ♪ ♪ 'Till you get just what you're looking for ♪ ♪ Supposed to just be waiting at my door ♪ ♪ You're so hard ♪ ♪ You're so hard to be around ♪ ♪ This time you'll find me on your floor ♪ ♪ Pour the holy water on my head ♪ ♪ Let its sins become the dead ♪ ♪ Wash the dirt from off my soul ♪ ♪ Must be crippled but he all condones ♪ ♪ You're so hard ♪ ♪ You're so hard to be around ♪ ♪ This time, you'll find me on your floor ♪ ♪ Mystifying so you really trying ♪ ♪ You must be smiling but you're still lying ♪ ♪ What's the use ♪ ♪ Grab the news ♪ ♪ You telling the truth and it's real fine ♪ ♪ You're so hard ♪ ♪ You're so hard to be around ♪ ♪ This time, you'll find me on your floor ♪ ♪ Pour the holy water on my head ♪ ♪ Let the sins become the dead ♪ ♪ Wash the dirt from off my soul ♪ ♪ Must be crippled but he all condones ♪ ♪ You're so hard ♪ ♪ You're so hard to be around ♪ ♪ This time, you'll find me on your floor ♪ ♪ This time, you'll find me on your floor ♪ ♪ This time, you'll find me on your floor ♪ (music ends) - Well, that's all we have on Prairie Post this week and as always, thanks for watching.

(gentle 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.