David Markee

In high school, David Markee was an indifferent student with a rebellious streak. His athletic career ended when he was kicked off the team for smoking cigarettes.
His turnaround started as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Since 1996, the former rebel has been chancellor of his alma mater.
In an extensive interview, Markee discussed his background and his plans to make UW-P bigger and better. Highlights of that conversation follow.

TH:When you were a high school student, what did you think you wanted to do? I doubt you thought you'd be a chancellor of a university.
DM:I did think about teaching. I thought I would be a social science teacher and maybe a coach. So that was an early-on thought. Then I came here, to Platteville (1960-64). I still stayed with the social science. I actually ended up with a degree in geography and a degree in English.
I had a couple of outstanding teachers in English, Frank Pross and Marge Hugunin. One of the residence halls is named after her. They just really interested me in English, both literature and language, and teaching of English.

David Markee Age: 61 Occupation: Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, since 1996. Hometown: Native of Madison, Wis. Also lived in Iron Mountain, Mich. Family: Husband of Lou Ann; father of Greg and Jeff; grandfather of two. Education: Doctorate in counseling psychology, University of Missouri, 1974; master's degree in counseling and guidance, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, 1968; bachelor of science in English and geography, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, 1964. Current community leadership: Regional Economic Development Annual Conference co-chair; United Way; Kiwanis Club. Professional associations: Association of State Colleges and Universities; National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III Committee; Council for Advancement and Support of Education; National Society of Fund Raising Executives; Kappa Delta Pi; Phi Delta Kappa; Omicron Delta Kappa. Honors: Platteville Chamber of Commerce Businessman of the Year, 2002; Madison Edgewood High School Alumni Award, 2000. Hobbies: Travel, outdoor recreation, history, attending sports, musical and theatrical events.

TH: What line of work were your parents involved in?
DM: Mother didn't work when we lived in Iron Mountain, Mich., and my dad was a sales engineer. They were building an mmunitions plant for the for the Korean War. Following the war Mother and Dad divorced. That's when she packed up the five kids and we came back to Madison. Her family was from just outside of Madison, in Fitchburg.
She went to work for Bowman Dairy and was Mr. Bowman's personal secretary for many, many years. Then moved to the Madison Public Library after that and finished her career as business manager at Madison Public Library. She raised the five of us. We were all first generation youngsters. I mean, Mom or Dad, neither went to college.

TH:What were you like as a kid?
DM:The divorce of my mother and father occurred when I was in eighth grade, and I was quite a rebellious high school student. Pretty independent. Mother had five of us and a couple of us were a little older, so we had some significant responsibilities.
I started working early, loading beer coolers in the morning at 6 in the morning at Mickey's Dairy Bar next to the football stadium. I really wasn't academically committed to anything in a major way at all. Enjoyed life and was involved in many, many things; whether it be athletics or just social things.

TH:What sports were you involved in?
DM:Football and basketball. But then, I was removed from that when I was senior for smoking cigarettes. I was on the edge. Then some of it was just being independent and trying to be bigger than I was.

TH:Does that experience give you a certain perspective when you have to deal with discipline issues?
DM:I think it has. I've spent my life in student affairs for many years, but I also started teaching at Platteville High School. I spent a fair amount of time with extra-curricular activities. But then I moved into counseling very soon and psychology and so on after that on the graduate level.
My growing up and the independence and rebellious nature - didn't get into any serious trouble or anything - but probably was on the fringe a few times, shaped me in terms of understanding what happens with young people, particularly when they go through conflict or have some problems. It manifests itself in many ways.
I do have a tolerance for people making a few mistakes and giving a person the chance to try and straighten that out.

TH:Obviously some transformation occurred, where you became a more dedicated student. Was there a particular time or incident?
DM:I honestly believe those two faculty members here that were in English. By my junior and senior years in college. The first two years, I was moving along very nice, but not setting any records anywhere. But I really enjoyed college life. Junior and senior year, I became more serious and I really became more serious each of the next few years, both in starting with those kinds of classes, but then reading and exploring things when I was a high school teacher.
Then, coming back here for the next degree. I really came back thinking I might be in theater. I wasn't sure I was going to be in counseling. It was a choice between theater and counseling; but there are so many similarities between those two.

TH:In what way?
DM:Just that you're studying human behavior. You're trying to observe and see what really is happening in a personality so that you can live it or be it. I found the classes in theater just as exciting as the classes in counseling in terms of understanding personalities and some of the psychology. Most good plays or things that you read or want to be a part of in theater are because there's excellent character development. There's transformations that occur. People are one way and then they change. They have a traumatic event in some way and then they behave differently. That's what happens in life.

TH:How did you and your wife, Lou Ann, meet?
DM:We met at the student center here.

TH:At UW-Platteville.
DM:She was a year behind me. It was my senior year. We really didn't know each other. She was a junior - from Lancaster, by the way - and I was a senior. We'd each been dating other people and running in different circles and so on. I just saw her and went over and asked if she wanted to go on a date or something, I can't remember what.

TH:Forty years ago, you were finishing up your undergraduate degree here. What things have not changed over that period of time?
DM:The relationship of our faculty to the students. It's very similar to what you find at the small liberal arts schools. The faculty know their students by name and they know something about them and it's personal. That's a characteristic that helped me when I came here.
When I came back and saw it was pretty much in place still. I put it right at the top of the list as one of the things I'd like to see us continue, is that personal commitment.
We're dealing with something that's kind of an interesting phenomena here. When I left here, I can't remember the exact number, but the average age was 21.6 or 7. Today, it's 21.6 or 7. There's not one-tenth of a year difference in the average age of our students.

TH:That would be not the case on a lot of campuses.
DM:That's true. There's more non-traditional (elsewhere). Part of it is the rural nature of our school, being in a smaller community and who we attract from. But we also have the kind of degree areas that I think you come right from high school for. Just the makeup of the institution hasn't changed.

TH: What has changed?
DM: The significant growth of our engineering and technology programs. When I left here, about 8 to 10 percent of the students were engineering technology majors. Now, it's 50 percent. That is just Platteville's niche in the state of Wisconsin.

TH: Now, in December, you announced a program to expand your draw from the tri-state area. (Starting in the fall of 2005, under the Tri-State Initiative, up to 200 eligible out-of-state students may enroll for in-state tuition and fees plus a $4,000 annual premium. The goal is to build enrollment by 2,000 students in a decade.)
DM:We started, actually, last summer. The governor had just completed some workforce study of the future for the state of Wisconsin. The results of indicated that, if you look at the next decade, there's going to be a half-dozen areas that there's going to be a real shortage of trained professionals in the state. And I looked at that list and it was a mirror of our offerings.
I worked with our deans and the provost and the faculty leadership. We put together a proposal that identified 2,000 students as a target.
Because the target group would not be to Wisconsin, I would continue our commitment at the level we have in the state of Wisconsin, but the 2,000 commitment would be in Iowa and Illinois. It would be focusing on areas that we're not trying to really compete with our school sisters in Dubuque, because they don't have these offerings. It looked like a perfect match and niche for us where we could stretch out and be a better university and serve more people.

TH:Can I ask about that 2,000 figure?
DM:Sure.

TH:Is that just a nice round number? That seems very ambitious.
DM:Well, we looked at our resources, the physical plant we have, what we could drive if we had X number of students. What we can do with this is cover the full cost of all instruction, with the in-state fee plus the premium. We could cover the cost of the staff and faculty, their fringe benefits, build an engineering complex, a second engineering complex and some additional classroom space and office space.
We have the other parts of the infrastructure already in place. The activities areas. We will build a residence hall or two, but most of that we're asking the private sector to pick up. We have almost no new state dollars involved with it.
We put all of those pieces together and it matched with 2,000.
If you go back in our history, when I was a student here, one-third of all of our students were from Illinois and Iowa. This year, we're at 3 or 4 percent. When we finish this 2,000 scenario in a decade, we will be back to about one-third of our students being from Illinois and Iowa. Exactly what we were before out-of-state tuition went way high.

TH:Let me ask you about the Chicago Bears. You've had two summers now without them training here. What was the impact of having them here and how much of a void did they leave?
DM:The void as it relates to the campus was more personal in that there were a core group of people on the campus that really spent time with them and were paid their salaries, etc., working through all those kinds of things.
Overall, the campus didn't generate on a year-to-year basis much money from the Bears. But the community and the region did. The motels, on and on and on, restaurants and gasoline and visiting and getting to know Southwest Wisconsin, Dubuque and the whole region.
So the impact was more regional when you really look at it. The people in this town were loyal and many of them are still and probably always will be Bear fans. There's that personal identity that is very strong and still is. The relationship went both ways. The McCaskey family gave us that $250,000 gift. They didn't want anything to do with athletics when they wanted to give us the gift. They wanted to do something for the general students, so they put together this lab that's in the student center. It's full from 7 in the morning until 11 at night. It's a quality place. It's the Bears Den over there. That's what they left, which was really a nice thing.

TH:Where are some of the more interesting places you've visited? What places do you like to visit? I guess those are two different questions.
DM:Two different questions. I've been to China a few times now. We have a master's program in China; our faculty teach there. I'm going over (in May). Put on a cap and gown and give graduate master's degrees to a group of 34 or 35 Chinese students who have finished a master's degree from here in English as a Second Language. So these people will teach other Chinese to be better teachers of English.
This school happens to be in Wuhan on the Yangtze River. It's a city of 7 million. It's one of the 50 largest in the world and growing.
We have partnerships in Stavanger, on the southwest tip of Norway. It's the third- or fourth-largest city in Norway. In fact, I think we have four students there right now. Three in education and one in engineering. They're one-for-one exchanges. Over a couple of years, we equal the trade-offs, so that neither has to pay out-of-state tuition. They just have to pay their room and board. Then we help with the travel scholarships. We have this in a number of areas.
One of my other favorite areas is, naturally, with my background, Ireland.
And Spain. Seville. That's a study abroad site for us. In a given year, that might only be 30 or so of our students. But we serve the University of Arizona, Indiana University, Michigan State, a couple of Pennsylvania state schools - all for the Seville program. But it's a special place because it's where Christopher Columbus is buried, in the cathedral there. But you go down little side streets, streets that have been there since Roman days, and you go next to the Jewish quarter, which is always in the old European cities, and you go down around the corner and there's the "University of Wisconsin-Platteville" sign on the wall. It's an institute that we run there.

TH:You have so many aspects of your job. What do you like most about what you do?
DM:Almost all of it I enjoy, even the challenges that come up, because it's very diverse. I may be working with (UW System President) Katharine Lyall and legislators with one breath and then the next time you have a student or a group of students that have a real concern about something and haven't felt they've had the right answers and so on. You do an awful lot of attending of events, both in the community, but also just student events and faculty events and so on and fine arts events and athletic events and so on. But I've always loved those kinds of things, you know.

TH:What would be one of the things you'd just as soon do without? Besides interviews like this.
DM:I've got to think about that a minute.
It would have to do with personnel. It would be when you try to do the best you can with some things and some people, and there's no understanding or appreciation of that. That doesn't happen real often, but it does on occasion, and that's disappointing to me. I don't mind having a real difference and trying to work through issues or problems or even differences in personalities and things like that, but when there isn't a willingness to see or take a look at things a different way, I have a hard time with that.
I think probably my experiences throughout, going up through student affairs and everything, I'm must more eclectic or much more open to different things and different views. I can be very strong about a view on something, but if somebody can quickly point out to me a different way, I don't have any trouble changing my path to deal with it.

TH:Right now, what are the issues on campus? What are faculty concerned about, students concerned about?
DM:The climate for faculty, they're real excited about this new initiative because it's going to lead into two or three more degree areas that we've can offer over time.
But the salaries in Wisconsin have been frozen. Basically at 1 percent or something like that for a couple of years. That is the over-riding - if you talk about something that has people down. They're working hard and they're doing a good job and there's a number of new and exciting things going, but they don't see the reward personally to help them. They're not crying and screaming about it, but they're certainly raising their concerns. Hopefully the state is turned around enough that that part of it can be resolved.

TH:What about the students?
DM:Cost of going to school. I don't care what kind of school it is, it costs more; there's still a margin that's difficult. But we have a fair number of students that are funding themselves. If they aren't, they're from families that have very modest amounts of flexible dollars to help with their college experience. So there's a fair amount of loan dollars. We try to offer as many jobs as we possibly can on campus to help offset that, but that, in my mind, would be right at the top.
Now, students are different than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Most students have cars. That's something they've grown up with since high school. There's more toys, they're not toys, they're necessary because they're going home on the weekends and working and so on and other kinds of things too. But people do have more things. And they're used to more things, even before they come to school. Then if they have to pay their own way, or work and pay their own way, and then they get car insurance that doubles or that kind of things, it's very difficult.

TH:Do you remember what it cost to go to UW-Platteville when you were finishing up here?
DM:My last year was, I think, $125 a semester tuition. I don't know, room and board was probably in the same range each. It was probably a $600, $700 package.

TH:I think every time it went up, students said, "This is the limit."
DM:Oh yeah. A $5 increase at that time was big deal. Now it's a few-hundred-dollar increase in a given year.

TH:What steps has the university taken to try to keep those costs under control?
DM:One is to take a look at where we can hire students as much as possible. That's one of the key ones. Make sure we're out fundraising to bring in more scholarship dollars. We probably have $600,000 or $700,000 now we can give out annually. But if we had three or four times that - which I think the campus will probably have in 15 years - it would really be helpful. Those are probably the two biggest ways we can help.
Then just maybe some planning. Sometimes it's encouraging students to stretch out their degree a little longer. Many of our students take co-ops and internships and that's proved to be valuable. Two reasons. One is the students have a tie with that particular place then and most of them get an offer and a job when they go for that placement. But it's also a way for them to cover their costs. I think educationally it's solid and it does help the student financially as well and it gets them a leg up for a job in the future.

TH:You've laid out this 10-year plan for enrollment growth and so on. Do you plan on working here to the end of that 10 years?
DM:No. You asked earlier about what are the other challenges right now. And one is to make sure is, I have a goal before I retire, would be to have all the infrastructure in place to do this right.
I feel like we've invested - and personally I've invested - a great deal and try and convince everyone that this is something this campus can do. I feel I have to do my part to make sure we have the infrastructure.

TH:Regarding the infrastructure: Three to five years?
DM:Yeah, at the outside. I'll say it that way, but it might be closer to the three.

TH:I take it you don't have a lot of spare time. But when you do, what do you like to do?
DM:I get into my history in that regard. Lou Ann and I do an awful lot of camping and outdoor kinds of things. When we retire, I know we're going to be part-time in Florida. We'll do a combination of golfing and boating down there.

TH:Let's say your phone rang and it was a prospective student - from Dubuque, on the Iowa side of the river - who says, "Tell me why I should consider UW - Platteville?"
DM:We have absolutely first-rate degree programs that you'd be very successful if you graduate from here.
Secondly, if you need help, you're going to get it. It will be personal experience. And we care. And you'll be safe when you're here and I think you'll have fun, which as an undergraduate student is part of what you should have, too.