Gary Shorman: Hi everyone, and welcome to Forward Ever. In this case, it's a special edition of Forward Ever because we have an interview with the president of Fort Hays State University, Dr. Tisa Mason, and our show deals with challenging times, and our guest today faces challenges every day. But it's been an interesting time with the last few weeks of the announcement of Sternberg being closed, Sternberg Museum being closed, and the budget cuts and what all went into that. But there's momentum picking up that this problem can be fixed and will be fixed. President Mason, good to have you on our program today.
Tisa Mason: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Gary Shorman: So there's a lot of stuff going on, and leading into this, there's the university stuff. And the other night, I was so proud of the university. 9,100 people were out watching football. The university is the face of Western Kansas in many ways, and to get out and see that kind of support for the university is just way fun to see.
Tisa Mason: Yeah, I really appreciate starting with this and and with the blessings. And I've tried to even amidst a very challenging time, always stop and say. Even the legislature-they have really invested in this university. Look at our nursing building, look at our HVAC system and the Coliseum. Some special funding that they've given us-it's not all bad news, but there's still very big challenges that we're having to navigate, and those issues are very complex. And it's very easy to quarterback with not all of the information, but we're doing the best that we can to honor this region of our state, and especially to keep our students' education number one.
Gary Shorman: When you look at this, the challenge with Sternberg Museum started really back when there were budget cuts that came from the state, and you had to make choices. You and your team had to make choices of what to do if we don't have the money, we just can't go back to Gross Coliseum and print some more up. You know we've got to find ways to go forward, and one of the ways was closing Sternberg. What do you wish people knew more about that whole $2.4 million cut that they need to understand to help them know why that decision was made at that point in time?
Tisa Mason: So I think we have to start with the fact that the way the institutions of higher education, the K-bor institutions, are funded is based on a very old historical model, and it hurts Fort Hays deeply. For example, right now Fort Hays, for a very long time, receives lower state-funded per student per full-time student than any other institution, and we also have stayed really clear on our mission affordability and access, and we've been successful. But we operate very lean. For example, students pay by credit hour, and to produce a credit hour at Fort Hays State University, we spend $288, whereas the next lowest institution spends $407, and the highest is $649 for one credit hour.
That's a big variance when those dollars have to go into faculty staff salaries, keeping up our campus, our marketing, our recruiting. When you think our financial aid, lots of federal regulations guiding that. It's a very complex thing. And so when you have the leanest budget, and then you go into the legislative session, and they have to make cuts. And I understand they have to make cuts. We all have to make cuts, but there didn't seem to be the understanding that if you take like the three regionals, and one is funded, for example, $5, one $10, and one $15, and you cut $1 from everyone, and it sounds equal.
It is not equal. $1 from somebody getting $5 has a lot less flexibility than $1 from somebody getting $15 per student. So just as an example, and so that made it very very hard for us to navigate. We are down to the bone in efficiency. I'm really proud of our model. We're a good investment in the state, but it gave us a lot less wiggle room and flexibility to find the cut. So the first thing that we did is what we always do, is we went back to our budget and we looked at where we can start taking some of these cuts. And we came up with all kinds of things on OOE, that's our operating funds across the institution.
Some reduced vacancies positions through vacancies where we felt like we could still maintain quality. And we came up with about a million dollars of cuts. Now you also need to understand that while we're cutting that million dollars, we have to budget in for the state gave us a modest increase, and then we have to match that because it doesn't cover everyone. So we're going down a million, we're going up a million dollars in salary increases, and $785 just in insurance, and we're not even talking about utilities yet. So things are creeping up. Our funding is going down. We're trying to cut, but we got, we cut a million, and then we sat at 1,000,000.5. And so I had to look across the institution and say, what is really not driving student access and graduation?
And one of the things, which was really hard for me, I had to look at is that we had over $800,000 subsidies for very, for a very long time of the Sternberg Museum, and it seemed like that was much more of a responsible decision than impacting some of the resources that our students need to be able to succeed at Fort Hays State University, and I knew it was going to be hard.
I never thought it was not going to be hard, but it seemed like it would be responsible. And the first thing that we did, as we always do at Fort Hays, is think about the people, and so even though we need the cut this year, we guaranteed that the faculty and the staff that were employed by the museum would stay on contract through the entire process of this fiscal year through July, and that they would be involved in helping us understand what we needed to do with the museum: what could stay, what could go, what could be incorporated in campus-that has always been the plan from from day one-is to engage the people closest to re-envision that, that future. But unfortunately, when I talked to just one person, I hadn't even had an opportunity to talk to the staff. I was out of state.
It hit social media with not any contacts, with not any dialog with the staff that I needed to have dialog with, and there were a lot of assumptions that were made along with that decision.
Gary Shorman: So you said you knew it was going to be hard. Yeah. You know, in leadership, there's challenges you had, so you knew this was going to be a hard decision. You know, another way to say it, it's a hard pill to swallow. Everybody likes Sternberg Museum, but that decision didn't come in a vacuum. Correct?
Tisa Mason: No, and I talked to. I did my homework. I talked to. I talked to legislators. I talked to some community leaders. I talked to some of our big donors, and I said, "This is really hard, and this is what I'm facing. What do you think? And mostly, people said you had to do it. This is, people who had a strong understanding of our government and our funding policy were supporting the decision prior to it going public, but the public got hold of it before we got to take our communication plan and walk people through it.
Gary Shorman: And so, when that happens, you get some misunderstandings. What would you like the public to understand about the big picture in this whole process?
Tisa Mason: So, I think the most important thing is number one that it was a hard decision. It was not an easy decision, and number two, I often talk at Fort Hays State about an ethic of care, and from the moment we started talking about that, we talk about an ethic of care with the people it was going to directly impact and all of the collections, and that we would be really thoughtful on what we would do with those collections. I think there's some narrative that I was just looking for some, some short wins and everything was for sale and that was never the case.
We, we knew that we would have to have some expertise of that staff to figure out a lot of complexity with the, the collections. There are many collections out there. Some of them may not be owned by the university. Some of them have a lot of strings attached from, from donors and from other legal documents, and all of that would have to be and still does have to be examined and carefully planned for. And we knew that from the beginning. And that that work was going to be important, and it was going to be guiding the work of the university in partnership with the folks that would help us lead it.
Gary Shorman: One of the things that I feel, and, and probably shouldn't ask the question in this way, but I just feel there's such value in Sternberg, and, and what is in that building is you know you talk about Smithsonian, you talk about other things where that has the history. What at Sternberg is the Smithsonian of Western Kansas? Because when you walk in there you see what happened millions of years ago, and sometimes it's really easy to drive up and down the interstate and just say, wow, this is nice. We have four lane highway we can get from Kansas City to Denver. People go back and forth, but this history under the dome is unique to Western Kansas, and there's some real value in that. So I know why that decision was hard to make.
On the other side, there's some good news coming down the road of at least a short-term plan to do that. There's a matching fund went in. I'm part of closure, part of the Schmidt Foundation. I lead that as president, and we felt that same value in saying, "Okay, how do we go about helping do this? And so it's like you know we can put money into this, but we also want to match others who are doing that as well. So those people that are talking about it, those people that have some sort of, I know, I say agenda about it, put money in to help save the museum. That gets matched by the Schmidt Foundation. So we're happy to be a part of that. And I had a chance to do something with you the other day where we recorded that, and you can't say it enough about the value of the Sternberg Museum to our region.
Tisa Mason: Yes, and I'm very, very grateful for the Schmidt Foundation and their partnership on this in particular, but on many, many things at Fort Hays State University been really strong supporters and helpers, and that's what changed. You know, the plan to think thoughtfully about the Sternberg collection never pivoted, but what did change is some capacity to slow that down a little bit and to help us deal with the immediate budget challenge.
I mean, also important to Western Kansas is this, is this university and the $240 million annual economic impact. And if we have to raise tuition and prohibit access to students that don't have the money to pay, that's also going to have some consequences as well, and so it's really a very difficult position to be in. But this gives us the capacity to deal with some immediate, short-term financial while we do some long-term planning to try and get to the best decision we can.
Gary Shorman: So, Tisa, I'm going to take a quick break. Our sponsor is Worth Wealth Management. Want to come back and talk about that long-term plan? You know, we talk about short-term. There's a way to do that. I think people are going to step up. I had a text message last night, and two people from two different people who were going to be giving so that the Schmidt Foundation could match what they are doing. And I thought, yeah, that's what this is about because we're a community. We're not just a foundation. We're a community. We're a college. We're a university where people are out there. Students can give $10 or $20 to do this. People in the community, the city, county, those people that need to be a part of this should really jump on board and do these sorts of things, and I love that community aspect of this.
I want to talk a little bit more about how to go about doing that, and kind of your vision long term. Once we get the short term problem solved, how do we solve the long term problem? So our guest Tisa Mason, she's president of Fort Hays State University. She'll be back, and we'll talk more about this in just a minute.
Gary Shorman: Welcome back to Forward Ever, leading to challenging times. Our guest is Dr. Tisa Mason, who is president of Fort Hays State University. Challenging times. We all have them in business, personal things that we have go on, university has a lot of them, but a big one in Sternberg Museum. And due to the funding issues, tough decisions were made. We've been talking about that, but President Mason, when you talk about what goes on in the university, being able to support all of the students has always been a priority, and I think every day, I know you get up early and go do things, but you're out there doing things. The students, you know, I see them in scholars, but you see them every day across the campus, and what that means to not only our community but our state.
Tisa Mason: Yes, you know, and our students are a wide variety of people, from adult learners to folks that need to go over to our food pantry because they're really struggling financially, to student athletes and musicians and artists, and they're, they're a wide group. But what I always have really valued and would hope to lean more on during this challenging time is that when challenges come, the campus community and the wider community can step up together. We can either put our collective brain power together to come up with a great solution, or we can turn our backs and fight and be upset. And I'm working really hard on the campus to bring folks together.
It's been particularly challenging because of the social media and information that was shared out of context to bring back that rallying cry. But my leadership is you know everybody all in to move us forward. It always has been, and it's always been centered on treating people, our students, our faculty, our staff, our community members with care. And so the more that, we all have choices every day how we help, and so we can all all be in and come together, or we can be divisive. And I, I am very hopeful not only with the challenge. And again, thank you to the Schmidt Foundation, but even to more recent faculty and staff and student conversations that I've been having.
When everything went out on social media, not one person had a conversation with me. Not one, and so that was really hard to get back in front of folks and say, "Let's talk this through. That's what we do when we're in conflict with a family, a community: is we identify solutions and we come together on a common purpose.
Gary Shorman: You mentioned out of context stories on social media. How are you trying to deal with that?
Tisa Mason: So one of the things that I'm doing right now is I'm starting to break into groups. So I have every other week, a president's roundtable, which includes myself, our student government president, our faculty senate president and our student government president. So over the next couple days, starting today with staff senate, their executive teams will come up here to Sheridan and we'll sit around a round table, which isn't really round, and we'll talk about: okay, what questions do you have? Would you like me to go backwards and fill in the blanks of what you haven't heard from me and what the context was. Do you have any thoughts or advice that you want to offer? If you had it to do over, what would you do? We should all be learning as adult learners teachable moments, and I was frustrated.
And one of the reasons why I didn't speak up sooner is because I still hadn't had a chance to talk to staff, and I didn't want to talk to the public before I talked to the staff impacted. That was really important to me, and then there was so much out there, it was just hard to pull back. But I think you know, working together, telling the story, getting everybody on the same page, and making sure that we're leading forward together is really important.
Gary Shorman: So the big key is give now. Your gift gets matched, so it doubles in value. If you give $10, it's $20. If you give 50,000, it's 100,000. That gift gets matched up to a million dollars by the Schmidt Foundation, and you know I always go back and think you know Bob and Pat they were engaged when early because of the, the foundation and, and Sternberg has not always been out where it is, and there was a whole push to get it out there because there's so many positive things, and you think back on that, and you see why it was out there, what it's being done. There's a chance to really retell that story, and I think you mentioned this Sternberg 2.0. So, what's your vision for that Sternberg 2.0?
Tisa Mason: Well, first of all, we don't want to. We need to have a model that is. Sustainable, so that we're never placed in this position, right? If we keep having a model that isn't sustainable, then it's going to come up because we're going to make choices between academics and Sternberg, and I don't want any other president ever to be put in that position again because it's a terrible one. I'm really excited by the leadership of our provost and our dean and our faculty and staff that are right at the center of it, thinking about how do we preserve everything, how do we give some public access? I think that's really important as well.
I don't want to step too far into their visioning process because I haven't sat with them, but making sure that, that history that's important to Western Kansas is here is active, accessible and maybe new electronic ways and new different ways that we haven't really stepped up with. But again, I don't want to step too far into that work because that's the work that I've charged the people closest to it to work on, and I'm excited to see what they come up with because I know that they're smart and they're going to take us forward.
Gary Shorman: You know, they're across the state. You look at different ways to fund museums. I'll say the Eisenhower Museum is one. You go across the state. There's all sorts of ways. Most of them have external support for doing that. Fort Hays has been the sole supporter of Sternberg Museum, and I think that that's one of the things out there. How does that play into the long term? But those are things I think you're going to look at.
Tisa Mason: Yes, and the really exciting part of the kind of messy middle that we're in right now is that people did step up, and that's what changed the future for Sternberg immediately. And I hope that people understand that even though I had to make that decision, when opportunities opened up, we were able to reverse that decision or at least pivot into a new direction. We couldn't have done that if the Schmidt Foundation didn't step up, and several other community organizations and people and leaders who said we'll help you. We understand that this is difficult. This is important to us too, so we're going to be in partnership with you. And again, I explored a lot of different models to find that in the past two to four years, and it just didn't materialize.
Those partnerships didn't materialize. But the good part about the messiness is it created a little bit more of an urgency and a crisis where people said we will step up, we will partner, we will be part of the solution, and that's what real communities are all about. It's not the screaming and the yelling, but the partnerships that we're all in. Let's move forward together and let's do this.
Gary Shorman: So somebody wants to give a gift, we'll wrap up with this. They can go in real easy, click a button on Save Sternberg, and click a button and give a gift. And if it's a big gift, that's terrific. If it's a smaller gift, that's even more terrific because I know there have been, I'll say, an exciting number of people who have stepped forward to give gift. And I have to say that makes my heart warm that the community is behind this.
Tisa Mason: Absolutely, it's all about being all in together.
Gary Shorman: All right, President Mason, thank you for your work on doing this. Thanks for your leadership. Your chair is not an easy chair to sit in on some days, probably on most days. But when decisions like this come down, it's hard to do. Thanks for the open dialog on on where we're going with this particular challenge, and I know if there's any questions, you know you have a group that's working on doing this, and, and find a way to do that in a positive way, even more better or better is to give a gift to help Sternberg short term, so we can find that long term position. Anything else, President Mason?
Tisa Mason: No, just please continue to support this university. It's important to our area, and we certainly give back as well. And so, thank you for all of the people who have stepped up to the plate so far with the gifts, with the support, and especially with the kind words, because kind words matter too.
Gary Shorman: They do. Thank you for being here today, our president of the university, Dr. Tisa Mason. Thank you for being a part of the show. Thank you for listening or watching. Hope you participate and click a button to give to Sternberg Museum. Our program is brought to you by Werth Wealth Management, where you can live with confidence. I'm Gary Shorman.