Addtional conversation with David Markee

TH:You've mentioned your interest in theater. Do you have a play that you particularly enjoy?
DM:What always that comes to my mind is the one I directed when I was teaching high school and that was, "The Diary of Anne Frank." I directed it at Platteville High School. We had a lot of fun with that. It was my first attempt at a play. So a couple of faculty members helped me out in terms of what I should do on a stage and that kind of thing because I hadn't taken any classes.
Kay Helker - now of Helker Jeweler, in town - she was Anne Frank and she was absolutely excellent. She was a sophomore in high school at the time. But that always stands out in my mind, naturally, because it was so personal in doing that. It was such a message, too, about life and pain and the world.
And it tied into geography for me, in studying the world. That's really an avocation of mine, is travel, the world, and different aspects of geography.

TH:Does Lou Ann go along on your overseas trips?
DM:She probably goes on a third or maybe up to a half. She went to China with me once. Our football team went to Germany last May. She and I both went on that, which was a great experience. The students all took a class in the spring semester and then they traveled. There were about 40 students with us, 35 or so football players. It was open to anybody else on campus. We have four or five other students as well. And some parents and alums. But it was just a really excellent trip.
It was amazing. Platteville has a fair number of youngsters that have never traveled much. They're small- town. And parents that haven't traveled, either. We must have had four, five sets of parents for that trip that had never been on a plane and had never been out of this region of this country. So naturally, some of the students hadn't had any of the experiences, either.
We've got a Norway trip for alumni coming up. But coming up next spring, the two basketball teams are going to go to Berlin, Prague and into Austria, maybe down to Vienna. We're going to try and rotate them every year or two, we'll have a couple of teams that will do that - where they take a class in the spring and then go in May on a trip.
We have a goal of 200 to 300 of our students have an international experience each year. What we try to do is set aside scholarship dollars, got to have them be partnerships if we can, where they don't have to pay the tuition out of state, but just pay their home tuition, just as if they were here, then if we could come up with $500 or $600 travel scholarship, if you plan ahead, that generally covers the trip. Then they just have the same room and board as if they were here. It makes it quite realistic, if possible.

TH: Tell me more about the Tri-State Initiative.
DM: We've had to visit everybody, in the governor's office to the legislators. Our first meeting was with all our regional legislators and they are very excited about it. Our regents, to a person, thought it was a good plan.
We have almost no new state dollars involved with it. The one exception is we are probably going to have an extra floor of classrooms in the old Ullsvik Center. Our next capital budget state-funded facility was to redo the Ullsvik Center, the old student center.
Now, why is (this program) going to be attractive for somebody from Illinois and Iowa? It's because the cost is going to be competitive. Our in-state costs, plus the premium, if you consider in-state tuition, the room and board and the books, which we have book rentals here, which saves $800 to $900 a year, you put all four of those together, we may be a hair higher than Iowa in-state, public institutions, and certainly under the private. If you go to Illinois, we will be even under the publics with the premium.
But we found, we've had a team out in the areas in northern Illinois, and some into the Quad Cities and Dubuque and so, but we're picking up in the smaller areas, etc., is that the students are really excited because this is the kind of school they would like to go to. They may not be able to afford a private - or their family can't. If they could find one that had their particular degree areas that we're talking about. But for a public institution, it was almost impossible to find a niche, if you're in Illinois, to go into. An affordable niche.
We are in a community that's small, the campus is relatively small, for the total number of students, although we're really not that small on the campus, but it also is ranked in the top group of schools in the country for being safe. So moms and dads like the safety and security. We're dealing with 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds, not the non-traditional older returning student. It's a nice niche. It looks like it's going to work for us real well.

TH:How would you describe your management style?
DM:I work not to be, but I'm fairly hands-on. I have a very excellent administrative group here, deans and provost and other assistant chancellors and business and so on. But I really enjoy asking questions about some of the things that are going on and what we're into and what we're doing.
I try not to interfere with the day-to-day decisions but maybe try to encourage and challenge how far we think we can go in some things.

TH:I sense from part of your answer that you sometimes have to remind yourself, "This is my assistant's job."
DM:Right. I need to allow people to move that, steer that ship. And there may be some very good reasons that they're going the pace they are, given time. I need to make sure my questions are, when we leave the conversation, are empowering and not hindering somebody from doing the job. Sometimes that's a delicate balance, as you know.