00:00:11,560	S1:
Welcome to Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz, a transparent and engaging conversational dive into meaningful topics impacting local government in Bismarck, North Dakota. Bismarck Insights is dedicated to removing barriers between the city of Bismarck and the citizens we serve every day.

00:00:32,080	S2:
Welcome to Bismarck Insights with myself, mayor Mike Schmitz. In the past, we've been focusing on departments of the city, but we're going to change it up now and start to look at other organizations in the community. And our first one is the University of Mary. And I have Monsignor James Shea, the president of the university, with me today. Welcome. Thank you for joining me.

00:00:51,000	S3:
Mr. Mayor. It's great to be with you. Thanks for your leadership of our city and thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

00:00:56,520	S2:
So some people know who you are. Some people don't. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, how you came to your your ministry and ultimately serving out at the University of Mary after one of the longest term presidents of many universities in this country?

00:01:12,910	S3:
Yeah. To Sir Thomas Weldon. My predecessor, she served for 31 years. That was the longest, I think, that a woman president had ever served at a college or university. And of course, the university transformed under her leadership. She was one of the world's great people. And we miss her very much, very much. I grew up just 38 miles from Bismark, the little town of Hazleton, a couple of miles north on a farm. And Bismarck was the big town. That's where you went to get parts when the tractors or the rakes or the mowers or whatever would break down. And it's also where we'd come up and get a bag of Scotty's Burgers or Big Boy Chicken or something like that, you know. And so I grew up down there After I graduated, I went to the other private college in North Dakota for two years. I got a scholarship to Jamestown College, which is now the University of Jamestown. Then I entered the seminary to study for the priesthood. I was at Catholic U. In Washington, D.C., and then I was sent over to Rome, to the North American College, where I studied theology. Then I was ordained as a priest, and I was sent here to Bismarck. I was the associate pastor in the cathedral. I worked for your mom, who was the business manager. Diane Schmitz very competent, amazing person. And she was a business manager at the cathedral. And by the time Cramer was there, he had been there to talk about a long serving person. And I taught at Saint Mary Central High School, where where Jason and D.J., your sons were my students. And so I taught there. And then they they got rid of me. You know, it took them a while. I was there for five years before, um, before I was expelled from school, and I went out west. I was given two small parishes to take care of, and Killdeer and Halliday and I taught at Trinity High School in Dickinson. So that was a lot of ecumenical work, working because, of course, the Killdeer Cowboys hate the Trinity Titans. And so it was a lot of, you know, Catholics and Lutherans love each other compared to those people. And so so it was it was quite a it was quite a journey. But around that time, Sister Thomas, my predecessor, she was pretty sick. She had kidney disease and was running the university, but she was on dialysis 2 or 3 times a week. Even when she would travel for fundraising, which college presidents have to do quite a bit of, especially if you don't have a legislature to help you? Yes, very much. You've got you've got to do a lot of fundraising, but she'd have to find places for dialysis in Arizona or Florida or Utah or Ohio or wherever. And that was really a burden for her. And so then I came to the university in 2009. I was the youngest college president in America for ten years, when I was usurped just a couple of years ago by, uh, by a Dominican sister at Aquinas College in Nashville who's originally from Hebert, North Dakota. And so that's what we do at North Dakota. We find young, incompetent people to run colleges. But but I, I came to the university in 2009 and we've just seen gangbusters growth. It's been an amazing ride. And I will say, and I told you that I wrote a letter to the Bismarck Tribune about this, but I want to tell you, as our mayor, one of the one of the key parts of our success at the University of Mary, and one of the reasons that we've just welcomed this week the largest class in our history. One of the primary reasons for that is that we live in such an amazing community. Our secret power. The University of Maryland. It's really a secret power for us in North Dakota. Although we don't realize it, it's our product. People underestimate us all the time. And so they come. They come to visit the University of Mary. This. This incoming class is all 50 states and 20 countries. Wow. And they come and and they think, well, you know, maybe we'll just take a look because it's so affordable compared to all the other private universities. And so I'll just have it as a fallback place then. They're deeply impressed. They can't believe our facilities. They can't believe we play D2, NCAA athletics. They can't believe, uh, they can't believe the community that we're in. They drive around in Bismarck and they're just very impressed. And then they come. So.

00:05:41,430	S2:
So what are what do you find that the students or their parents, probably more the parents to start with, are finding as the the things that are the attractions in Bismarck.

00:05:51,070	S3:
Yeah. Well, I think first of all, you know, the there's a lot of tension. This isn't a major newsflash. If you're scandalized by it, we can talk afterward, but there's a lot of tension in our country right now. There's a lot of division. People are are are are really angry at each other. The the civic and the political life of our nation is pretty divided. And I think that out there in the wide world, people look at North Dakota as a kind of a little bit of a sea of tranquility, a place where life is still kind of normal. You know, I, um, the other day was the anniversary of the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the Lord of the rings, and we've had people come to our campus and compare us to the Shire, which is sort of a place where people can live their lives and go about their daily business. This is my experience here in Bismarck. I lived in Washington, DC, and I lived in Rome with two of the world's great cities, and they were great places to live. Very exciting. But I didn't go very much to the Smithsonian. I didn't go every day to the Roman Forum and look around and see the Colosseum. I do live my life and those are kind of inconvenient places to live your life. Um, Bismarck is a tremendously convenient place. Everything is right here, and I think people feel like they're there. They're their children are safe with us, that they have the amenities that they need. In other words, we're not, you know, um, a town of 200 in the middle of a pasture. We're a major city with everything you could ever want.

00:07:26,490	S2:
And fairly easy to get around. I mean, obviously campus is a few miles out of town, but, you know, I, I know that those students are in town a lot. Yes. Some of them actually work for me in my accounting firm.

00:07:39,650	S3:
Oh that's.

00:07:40,090	S2:
Great. Yeah. So how large is the enrollment of the freshman class this year or the new student? Or maybe it's maybe we should talk. Not just freshman class. Maybe it's new students across the campus.

00:07:50,650	S3:
Yeah. So our freshman class is the largest by far. And it's a larger by far than it's ever been about 570 freshmen this year. And as I said, from all 50 states and 20 countries, in addition to that, we've got more than 120 transfer students. So those are new students at the university who went somewhere else first. And they've decided to transfer into the university, which for an institution of our size is a really strong number of transfers. That's 700 new students. So 700 new students have converged this week on our campus. It brings our total enrollment to almost 4000. Uh, probably we're in the 38,900 range right now.

00:08:33,680	S2:
And how many of those are on campus? I'll call them students or those that are generally taking classes out in a facility on campus, about 23,400. And so we have a fair presence of remote or online.

00:08:46,960	S3:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. So of course we've got campuses all over the world in Rome, and we've got students who are at our campus in Billings and Fargo, and then we're at Arizona State University. We've got a merry college at ASU, is what it's called. So we brought back that name, Merry College at ASU. It's one of the colleges of of the largest public university in in the country. And that's a partnership between the University of Mary and ASU. And so we've got all of that. But yeah, about 23,400 are our on campus traditional students. And then in addition to that we only have beds for about 12, 1300 of them. And so at any given time, we've got more than 1000 of those students living in the city. And we'll always have that. Lots of places have aspirations to have much higher numbers living on campus. We'll never have all our students living on campus because we're so strong in the health sciences. When you're a senior nursing student, you're spending most of your days at Saint Alexius or at Sanford or at one of the other clinics. And so those students are always going to live in town and then their drinking age anyway, and so they can walk up and down Main Street and go to Peacock and, and to the Irish pub, you know, Blarney Stone and and shop and all of our businesses. And it's a great thing.

00:10:06,580	S2:
Do you feel that the with the addition of some of the new academic programs over the last, I suppose it's five or a little more than five years now, especially with the School of Engineering.

00:10:23,260	And how is that helping the school, the university in growth, but also western North Dakota? S3:
Absolutely. You know, we we we decided during vision 2030 planning. So that would have been 2013 ten years ago is when we launched vision 2030. And I was sitting in the room and they said, we need a school of engineering in western North Dakota. And I said, you people are crazy. That's not the university. Mary's wheelhouse. We do health sciences, we do teaching. We've got a nice business school. We do the humanities. You know what I mean? History and literature and philosophy. Theology, we've got all that. But engineering. North Dakota is the home to some of the great engineering schools of the whole world. And yes, you got a great engineering program. Und has got a good engineering program. Why would we need and. And I said, by the way, we've already got an engineering science degree, which was a partnership that we had with the University of Minnesota. So I said, students can come here and do two years, and then they have their pre accepted into the Twin Cities, um, flagship engineering program. Why would we need to add one? And they said, father you don't know what you're talking about. Now this is, this is something I get all the time. But they said you don't have any idea. Here's what you're doing. You're shipping all those students out to the Twin Cities. They never come back to North Dakota. And we need them in western North Dakota because we things in 2013. Remember, everything was white hot with the oil boom and everything. And they said engineering students do their internships during their junior and senior year. And then they almost always get employed by those engineering firms. And so we need them to be here. And that's that's we need that more than what Ndsu and UMD are even able to help us with. Those are great programs, but you can supplement that here in western North Dakota. And I said, okay. And they said, don't worry about it. We'll pay for it. This is what they said to me. And then oil went from $127 a barrel down to $27 a barrel. Then I couldn't walk down the street without people hiding behind garbage cans and trees. Nobody would see me at all. Mike. And so we built this engineering school because I had already made a commitment. I had stepped behind a microphone and announced that we were going to do this. And I try and keep my word. And so and so we built a school of engineering, and we built it the hard way. And I'm so grateful to those who did come alongside us. But engineering has been great for us. And so a lot of these great engineering firms in towns and other places like MDU and Basin Electric really do benefit bobcat. They all benefit greatly from all of these people, these young men and women who come in and who study engineering, engineering. We have a lot of female engineering students, but engineering is a heavily male, uh, major. And that does help us, of course, because the University of Mary has been traditionally more female. And so the ratio is a little bit better with that. The other big thing, though, is our nursing academy. In other words, last year we partnered with Sanford Health and with Saint Alexius to launch the nation's first tuition free nursing academy. And so we were able then to to bring 30 students from all across the country very promising, um, nursing students here. And they just arrived there, fully funded. All of their tuition is being paid for by our health care partners, and they make a commitment then to work here in our facilities for for a minimum of three years following their graduation. They're going to do that on our year round campus model. And so, you know, we've had for many years here on campus where you can get your bachelor's degree in 2.6 years and your master's degree in four years. So these are going to be year round. Campus nursing students 2.6 years nursing a Bachelor of Science in nursing with no, um, with no tuition costs at all. And they'll be working here at Stanford and at Kies.

00:14:08,860	S2:
And that will be great for this community. We already know that there's a shortage in health care in general, but certainly in nursing. And again, we bring them in. We get them to stay here for three years. And maybe they'll generate generates a longer relationship with their employer or partner for life and absolutely. And marriage and family and all those things, which is what we're trying to do is attract and retain.

00:14:35,420	S3:
It's exactly what we want, and that's a high priority. We think that as a citizen, we're the University of Mary, is a citizen of Bismarck Mandan. And so we see it as our responsibility to bring students here from the wide world and to keep them here for many years. I think going back to 2014, 15. More than half of our incoming students are from out of state, and we do retain a high number of them here because they fall in love with North Dakota. They fall in love with Bismarck. They fall in love with while there, their future spouse, they raise a family. It's a great thing with nursing. We brought in those 30 students. We brought in also eight alternates. Plus we filled our legacy program where we take about 70 a year. If you add it all up this year, we've got 110 new nursing students as freshmen at the University of Mary, which is way more than we've ever had before. And so it's great news for our community. It's great news, wonderful news.

00:15:29,980	S2:
That is great. So as a what are you seeing or what are your team members seeing as juniors and seniors at high school look for a college? What I mean, is it the parent that's bringing them? Is it is it something at the university itself? You touched on this some earlier, but is there a particular thing that helps trigger the decision?

00:15:51,420	S3:
Well, I think it's a cocktail of things. It's a it's a it's a different mix. People are looking for affordability. I think that that's really important in this time, because the pandemic sort of accelerated something which was already in the water, which was a question about the return on investment in higher education. In other words, a lot of people go to college, spend a lot of money, accumulate a lot of debt, and then what do they have to show for it? Well, they've got a degree, but does that degree make an appreciable difference in terms of their earning power or their capacity to contribute to their communities, this kind of thing? And I think a lot of people are asking questions as to whether or not college is worth it, whether they should go to college. Now, there will always be a market. There will always be a market for students who are looking to have that residential experience. But that market's going to shrink. That means that if you're going to keep that market, you've got to be the best at it. And that's one of the reasons that we've invested so much, not just in terms of resources and money in capital. We've we've invested a whole lot of intentionality and thought into how to craft the student experience at the University of Mary such that they have the amenities that they think they need, so that when they come, they can awaken to what they really need, which is a great education. So we've got 24 over seven dining. We've got an opportunity to study at our campus in Rome. We've got all kinds of exciting athletic events that people can go to. We've got a world class workout centre now. We've just added this fall the Lodge, which is a winter garden, in other words, a place where students can go all in the dead of February. They can go in there and there's there's lush greenery and a big fish tank and a waterfall and all that so that they can get that sense. But all of that, all of that, that's just that's just a way of signaling to the students. This is a humane, good place to live. But but college isn't about amenities. It's not. And so that's why we refuse simply to get into the arms race of it. It's not just about amenity, it's about your education. Yes. And so students awakened to that in the course of their time at the university. But they are looking for affordability. They're looking for the amenities. Where am I going to sleep? Where am I going to study? Where am I going to work out? Where am I going to eat? Where am I going to meet friends? They're looking for those kinds of things, and then they're looking for a place where they won't feel like they're trapped in the middle of nowhere, which is one of the reasons that Bismarck is just such an asset for us. The growth of our community and the things that are like when that chick fil A went in and down in South Bismarck. I mean, it's just a dumb little thing. You know what I mean? It's a place to get a chicken sandwich. Well, we had the Schwann truck, you know what I mean? You could get big boxes of chicken breast patties, and you put them in the microwave, and you've got a chicken sandwich. Well. But those those kinds of things make just a big difference. It's an amazing thing. And so none of them are substantial, but all of them add up to, uh, to convincing a student. I'm going to give this a shot. And when they do, they fall in love. They really love.

00:18:58,060	S2:
It. So what are the things that we could do as a city? From just talk about, from my perspective as the mayor or as a city commission, or maybe even I'll speak towards the chamber EDC. How do we help the University of Mary, um, retain the students when they're here, but also the partnership that goes back and forth. How do we retain them after they graduate? Absolutely. What are those tools that we need to do together or bring together, I should say to to keep those students here.

00:19:28,500	Post-graduation? S3:
Well, you're doing a lot of it already. In other words, every time that the city moves and that our community moves to, uh, to brighten or to strengthen, uh, the, the, the experience and quality of life here in Bismarck. Mandan. That makes it a, a more attractive community in which our students can stay in. So we're talking about public amenities, you know, parks and schools and making sure that our medical care is in good shape and all of those kinds of things. But here's the other thing. And this is less of a tangible thing. So it's not just about public works. It's not just about attracting, you know, the right businesses and all of that. Because our students, I think, know that if they want, they can get a job here in Bismarck. I think they know that. I think that they know that that we're a community that's on the move. And plus, Sister Thomas was so smart and we've tried not to be dumb, you know, in the wake of her. And we've we've very carefully crafted our academic offerings so that they serve our community. In other words, we don't have a lot of majors, uh, you know, like, uh, marine biology, if you get a degree in marine biology, you're off to Seattle. You would never stay here. So we don't do that. You know, we do like Lake Sakakawea, a biology and type of thing. But here's the thing. I think that that what higher education in this community needs more and more all the time is for the community, for the city to rally around us. We have a very unique sort of bouquet of educational offerings. We have a tribal college, which is very unique. It's not simply belonging. It doesn't belong just to one tribe. And doctor McDonald does an amazing job there. We've got a great community college, which is also burgeoning into a polytechnic institute, and Bismarck State College is a place that I think all of us can be very proud of. And some of some of the best students that we have at the University of Mary did their associate's degree at Bismarck State College before they came to us. And so that's magnificent. It's really wonderful. And then we've got a university, a faithful private university, which contributes as best we can to the cultural and even the religious and academic landscape of our community. And we offer bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and now five doctorates, five doctoral degrees. And so I think a place like Fargo-Moorhead, for instance, they've got Concordia and Moorhead, Minnesota State, Moorhead and Ndsu and you can feel it in the air there. How proud they are of their educational offerings. And I think that that we could do even more here for to have the community rally around higher ed so that University of Mary should be the hometown University of Bismarck. It really should be. And so, you know, I'd love to see more of that kind of a shot in the arm in that respect.

00:22:24,270	S2:
And I all agree with you. I think that is important. And trying to figure out how to do that is probably a challenge that I put out.

00:22:30,110	S3:
To.

00:22:30,470	S2:
Put out to, you know, business people in general. And, you know, there's some of us who graduated. I mean, I have two degrees from the University of Mary. It was Mary College the first time.

00:22:37,990	S3:
Yes, indeed. Well, all your listeners are out there and they said, I'm in senior, if you'd win more football games, we cheer more for you. We're going to win more football games. You buckle your seatbelts, we're on our way.

00:22:47,630	S2:
So. But that is true. We need to be proud of all of the institutions here in Bismarck, and I'm glad you mentioned the other. Bismarck and Mann, the other two institutions, because they are doing great things and they serve certain populations with certain needs that technically, you know, when it comes to the Polytech University, Mary isn't providing education in those trades. Some of those trades are technical skills. Yeah, there might be some crossover, obviously. And United Tribes is is serving a population base that, um, helps them culturally. That's right. And and that's a very important and I and I know you work well with all, all the institutions.

00:23:24,460	S3:
Oh, we'd love to do that. And the community loves to see it, too. It's important to them that, um, that we're working together and not at cross purposes with each other. That's really important.

00:23:33,580	S2:
Sure. So what what do you have as some challenges for the university and and how that relates to the community? What are what are you looking for for the future? What's happening? Do you think five years from now for the university?

00:23:44,060	S3:
Yeah. You know, one of the one of the things that Sister Thomas was really able to do toward the end of her time, and I'm talking like the 1990s and early 2000, is that she? She doubled down on our service to non-traditional students. And so that that meant that, you know, when we opened campuses in Fargo and in Billings, it was primarily to serve students weekends and evenings, those kinds of things, so that they could get their MBA or their or their teaching degree or, you know, their accounting degree or those kinds of things. And so we've we've continued to do that. And of course, like everybody, we've gone online and those offerings actually are quite impressive that we have. But I don't think a lot of people know that. I don't think a lot of people know that an MBA from the University of Mary, you would know this, but I don't think a lot of people know that an MBA from the University of Mary is as accessible and as affordable as all of those great big places like Grand Canyon University and southern New Hampshire and Western governors that are advertising, pouring millions of dollars into the North Dakota radio and television market. To advertise their programs. Of course, we don't have a budget like that, but we have much better, more personalized. Programs that students can take. And so if you are a nurse with a bachelor's degree in nursing. Or even if you just have your your associate's degree, if you're an RN, you can enroll in one of our programs and get and get a master of Science in nursing, which is wonderful and opens up all kinds of career possibilities for you. Same with the with the MBA. We've got a master's in in project management. We've got all kinds of graduate programs online that our community can really tap into. And we do a heck of a job. Like people, people really have a great experience enrolling in our programs. And so I think that that if people knew about that more, that would be wonderful.

00:25:43,440	S2:
So that becomes the challenge. How do we get that out there? That's right. Because that can I mean, it obviously helps local community and it yeah, it's an outreach. We know it's not every student is is here in Bismarck, but certainly is an opportunity and a challenge, I guess, for for the university.

00:25:57,510	S3:
Oh, we want so much for, uh, employers and business owners and leaders in the community to see the University of Mary as a resource that it really is, and to leverage that and to partner with us to get their workforces more educated. That helps with retention.

00:26:14,430	S2:
Absolutely.

00:26:14,950	S3:
It's just great.

00:26:16,150	S2:
And like I said, I have I have two young people who are seniors in accounting right now working for me.

00:26:21,590	S3:
They do a good job.

00:26:22,430	S2:
Right on a full time basis, and they do a great job.

00:26:24,550	S3:
They don't cuss a lot, do they?

00:26:25,750	S2:
No, they don't do that. Super. Thank you for joining me today on Bismarck Insights. It's been a pleasure having you here and being my first guest outside of the city staff.

00:26:34,830	S3:
Oh, great. Well, Mr. Mayor, you're doing a great job. I think the city commission is in as good a shape as it's ever been. I'm just really, really glad for us to be a part of this community. Thanks for having me on.

00:26:44,510	S2:
Thank you for partnering with us.

00:26:58,140	S1:
Thank you for watching Bismarck Insights with mayor Mike Schmitz. If you have specific topics or questions you'd like addressed in future episodes. Email Mayor Schmitz at Bismarck gov. Or call the City of Bismarck at (701) 355-1300.

00:27:16,100	S1:
To learn more about the City of Bismarck, visit Bismarck gov. Or follow us on a variety of social media channels by searching Bismarck and Gov. Bismarck Insights is a collaboration between Dakota Media Access and the City of Bismarck. You may find Bismarck Insights episodes on government access channels two and 602, as well as on Roku, Apple TV and fire TV devices. On Radio Access 102.5 FM and on Demand at FreeTV.org. Org.