Minnesota's educational elite pay visit to Bemidji State

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

July 25, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Minnesota's educational elite visited Bemidji State University for their first time ever Thursday, taking a brief tour and eating lunch with some of Bemidji's community leaders.

Bemidji was the fourth stop in a 32-city tour for both newly-appointed University of Minnesota President Mark Yudof and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Chancellor Morrie Anderson -- neither of whom had ever visited Bemidji.

After taking a two-hour tour of the campus with Bemidji State University President Jim Bensen, the two met with community leaders -- including state Sen. Dave Ten Eyck, DFL-East Gull Lake, and state Rep. Gail Skare, DFL-Bemidji -- and later dined with about 50 people in BSU's Beaux Arts Ballroom.

According to Yudof, the two are touring the state to better understand the two systems they too over July 1.

During a short speech at the luncheon, Anderson said it is an opportune time for the state's two higher educational systems to begin working together, since both him and Yudof are new to their posts and both come from outside their respective systems.

"We need to have a strong working relationship. We need to reduce the skepticism and increase the hope (of higher education's) capabilities," he said. "The success of Minnesota is tied to the success of the U of M and MnSCU."

Because he has only been on his job for a few weeks, Yudof said he did not have much of a mission statement to announce to the public, but said he wants to tour some of the state's campuses just to learn about them.

He agreed with Anderson that higher education's biggest problem is that with so many other issues facing state legislators, it is viewed as just another "mouth to feed." But by working together, the two systems should be able to reduce the number of programs that are replicated and pursue separate missions, he said.

Anderson said in an interview that BSU happens to be one of the "bright spots" in the MnSCU system, and that the university's joint projects with the private sector and other educational institutions should be a model for the entire system.

"(BSU President) Bensen has done an outstanding job of reaching out to other facilities, and he has expanded the concept of higher education," he said. "He came from the University of Wisconsin-Stout where they specialize in the degree of H-I-R-E. That is a focus here at BSU, and we can learn from that."

Anderson served as Gov. Arne Carlson's chief of staff for three years before taking the MnSCU post July 1. Prior to working in the governor's office, he was commissioner of the state's Department of Revenue for two years.

Yudof was an executive vice president and provost at the University of Texas at Austin prior to accepting the U of M presidency. He also served for 10 years as dean of the University of Texas School of Law at the Austin campus.