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Maravene Loeschke graduated from Towson State College in 1969 with a dual bachelor's degree in theater and English. Dr. Loeschke served as a faculty member and as chair in the theatre

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department at Towson before accepting the position of Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication. She served as Provost at Wilkes University and as president at Mansfield University before returning to her alma mater in

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2012 to serve as the 13th president of Towson University. These are her reflections. President Loeschke, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts about your own education at Towson University and your

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subsequent career. I think a good place to start is at the beginning. So first, I would be delighted if you could share with us your early social context, where you grew up, when you started having

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thoughts about where you might go to college or if you were going to go to college and how you wound up choosing Towson University. Well, I grew up in Parkville and then later, as a teenager,

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Towson. Most of the things our family did were in Towson. So I sort of say I grew up in Towson. I used to be in the car driving from Girl Scouts to church up

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and down York Road. And as a little girl, I would look up and say, wow, what is that, mom? And she said, well, that's where really smart people go to learn

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to become teachers. And I thought, I'm going to do that someday. So as Stephens Hall went rolling by, you know, I would say, I'm going to go there.

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Later, though, I wasn't sure I wanted to be a teacher in high school. And I fell in love with theatre. And so I wasn't at all sure Towson was for me.

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But Dick Gillespie had just started, five years prior to my going to college, a theatre program here at Towson that wasn't for teachers. And so I thought, well, I could sort of do both, like, I could

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prepare to be a teacher, and then I could prepare to be an actor. And since I can actually be a theatre major there, I think I will go to Towson.

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So that's how I wound up here. I really never considered any place else except for that short period of time when I didn't think they had a theatre major.

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You got here and you of course were inundated with all kinds of general university requirements. At that point, were you fairly certain that you were going to do a theatre major or was there something in gen

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eds that sort of solidified that for you or... The theatre program was so phenomenal that I was in love with it the minute I got in it. And that's because it was so eclectic.

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We were doing plays from around the world. We were... I learned so much every single day. The teaching was exquisite in the program, and we did...

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The bar was held so high for us for excellence, and we just gravitated to that, all of us. Now, it was a tension in my family because my father and mother were not about to pay for a theatre major.

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So I took a double major in English education and the theatre major so they would pay for some of it. And so I would tell people I was a theatre major and they would

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tell people I was an English major and that all worked well for everybody. But I never took the English major seriously. I took the courses.

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It wasn't my passion, and I'm always been very glad I have the degree, but to the day I graduated, I had no intention of being a teacher. I was going to New York, so it wasn't until very

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quickly after that that I was asked to come back and just step in for one semester for a teacher of acting, one that had not shown up. So I stepped right in and did that for fall semester and fell

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in love with teaching like you cannot believe. I just loved it. Teaching theater. I had never put those two things together.

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And particularly at the university level. So I had to start. Actually, the way it worked out is I was asked to stay on because I was good at it.

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I loved it. It was all working out nicely, but I didn't have a master's degree, so I had to start that immediately, and I did here at Towson, and that took me about a year and a half.

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So you were only... One... You graduated and you were away for a very brief amount of time. Just the summer. Yes.

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So the fall after graduation, I'm back to just step in for one semester. I see... I find I'm good at it.

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I find I love it. I could still continue acting, I could even direct, and had found this new passion by putting all this together.

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And so I went right here. I think I took three courses a semester. I would teach all day and go to class at night, and I believe I got that in a year and a half.

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So I had my master's from here while I was taking my first two years of teaching here. And that was a master's in education. So then you did indeed get some education, probably curriculum and instruction kinds of things going on in that degree.

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Yes, yes, I did. It was useful. It really was quite useful to me because I hadn't delved that deeply into the teaching at the undergraduate level, had taken

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some of the preliminary things. But it also taught me about theory that I hadn't touched before, of education. And I liked that a lot.

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And because a portion of the master's degree in education allowed you to do a bit of a thesis in a subject, I did my thesis on the... Shakespeare's women. I studied six of Shakespeare's women, the ones

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that are the most beautifully written. Not a lot of them are, they're all the guys roles. But in any case, I did that, I was able to do something connected to theatre and I was also teaching a course on that

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at the time. So it just was all fitting together so beautifully. Do you remember who any of those six women were? Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, Juliet, Rosalind.

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Well, I'm having trouble with the other two. I don't know. I don't remember the other two now. I think that's a pretty good four.

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I say pretty good. That was a while back. So I think that's impressive right there. But what a wonderful meshing of interests. Oh, it was.

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And you see, that's the thing about Towson is it has always been and continues to be centered on the students' needs. So Towson is not one to stick you into a program and you you

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take it come hell or high water and there's no leeway. They said, do your whole thesis. I think it was twelve credits. Do your whole thesis and your... Part of it was the

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internship and teaching the course. Put all that together, and I thought I could do that? And so it was about finding where people need to go. All of us in education who came out of Towson know that we

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do that. So I'm so proud of that and we still do that. Do you remember any particular professors or any kind of curriculum that just stood you well as you progressed

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through your career? Well, that theatre major was one of the most amazing things any of us could ever have had. There is not a single solitary thing except technology that I

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did not, that I needed in my career, that I did not get from that theatre major. We had to write. We had to write a thesis to get an undergraduate thesis.

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We had to be able to calculate. We had to be able to do mathematics because we had to design sets. We had to be organized.

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We had to solve problems. We had to be on time. We had to stay late. We had to analyze critically, thinking analytically,

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creatively, in any which way. We had to put ourselves on the line artistically, with the exception of the fact that technology didn't much exist other than the Xerox machine when I was in college, that I had

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to learn later. But everything else, the base of anything I've ever needed to do. I got in that liberal arts... I knew how to learn things.

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And that is why so many theatre majors are working and have had great careers even when they didn't go into theatre. Because if you can survive a theatre major at Towson, you can get a job anywhere.

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And that's one of the things that I discovered. But I had a teacher to hear her, her name was Freddie Kundig in the science department. And I did not care for science.

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I had been taught as a little girl that wasn't for me. And it's like we are all trying to deal with today. And I took her functional anatomy course and just said, whoa, science is so interesting.

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But it was late. I was a junior. I think I would have taken a science minor if I had discovered her sooner.

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And watching her teach a subject she loved informed me about how you teach a subject you love. So I watched her and I said, oh, I want to be like her as a teacher.

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So she was a major role model for me. And that was anatomy? Yes, functional anatomy. And that would be perfect for somebody who was going to be in

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the field of theater. Yes, I used it in mime because I taught mime for so many years. And it wasn't just the ballet, it wasn't just the mime courses that informed that, but her functional anatomy courses.

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Neat. So you came back, you were off for summer and then you you started teaching at Townson. And were you still given sufficient opportunity to hone

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your craft as an actor as part of that so that those could kind of go hand in hand? Yes, we had a professional theatre company in summer here where you could come back even if you were an Equity actor and

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and perform. Now we didn't do roles during the school year because we wanted the students to have all those, but in summer it was open to anyone.

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So I was able, particularly in the later years, after about eight years I was able to do a major role every year with the Maryland Arts Festival and do some commercials, which are always fun to do, just fun.

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They're not artistically fabulous, but they're fun and to do some local work and some films and things such as that in summers and occasionally during the school year, if it was a three day shoot, I could sometimes pull that off.

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And so I was able to continue as an actress, which was another great thing was I didn't have to give that up. But more importantly perhaps to me was my development as a director, because I had never thought of that.

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And now as a member of the theatre department, you're expected to direct once a year. And I had had no experience with it. And so the department said, OK, take your turn.

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And so I started directing and eventually directed about 30 shows here. But if that department had not said to me, go do it, like Towson always does for students and faculty and new faculty,

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they didn't say, well, you didn't have any experience in directing. So now you can't direct. They said go do it, you can do it.

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And it was an opportunity to to find out what that meant. So I was able to do more directing those first ten years. Then when the Maryland Arts Festival really kicked in, I did 20 years of a major role every summer, which was just

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beautiful to be able to perform all that beautiful literature. Right, and just worked into your career so beautifully. So it just continued to work into my career, but teaching was my primary passion and I was a much better teacher when I was

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acting or directing, that was when I'm actually doing what you're teaching them to do. I found I was a much better teacher in those semesters when I was acting or right after I had acted.

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So that's why I wanted to continue to do it as well. Well, and then how wonderful that your students get to have a sense of you in that role. Yeah.

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You have to put yourself on the line like you're asking them to do. So your whole class comes and watches you act. And they're taking little notes like you do.

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And sometimes in the summers, I was able to act with my students because it was open to anyone. So the students would audition. Professionals would come in and audition.

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So often I got to work with the students I had just taught. That was heaven on earth. Truly was. Now, but somebody, even though you love teaching the very best, somebody just sort of pulled at you and said,

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Maravene, would you consider being acting chair or chair or would you do it for a semester or... That's how it happened. How did that come to pass? Well, here I am now in a theatre department with all the people

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who taught me and some other people now who would come in who are new. So the faculty come together and they say it's time for a new chairperson.

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And the person who was doing it was stepping down. And they said, would you consider doing this? And I said, you're not going to listen to me. You're my teachers.

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I'm busy. I don't want to be an administrator, I want to teach. Give me a break. And they said, no, we really will listen to you

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because you're so organized. And I was, I was very organized. And they said, we'll listen to, we need to be organized. We have to have a vision.

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Yeah. You lead us, you take us us down the path for a while. And I said, all right, I'll do it for three years.

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I'll take my turn, but I'm not going to do it... Somebody else has to do it then because I got to get back to teaching. And thirteen years later, I was still the chair because I loved it.

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Here we go again. I couldn't believe how much autonomy I had to be able to shape something we could all move... A vision that we could all move towards in the

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theatre program, we were all directing and acting and teaching and... But how do you move it as a unit? And that interested me tremendously.

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And I had, I was young and I had the organization to, like, get people in line and just, you could teach this and you two could teach that together. And then the students could take one less course over here, but

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then they would do a writing thing. You can see how excited I was about cutting back the bureaucracy for students and developing an MFA in theater. And the whole thing was just invigorating to be able to do.

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And I found out that it was incredibly rewarding to be an administrator. The difficulty was that now we were chopping away at my day a little bit here, so I had to, I was acting a little less and the

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administration was becoming heavier and I couldn't teach a full load and I missed the teaching. There were a couple of courses I had to drop off and I didn't want to do that.

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So I taught an overload and it just got a little crazy in there because I was not willing to define myself solely as an administrator, which is what I tell young people all the time as they make these wonderful shifts.

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Sometimes you just have to say you are not a teacher now, you are an administrator who does a real fine job teaching when you can. And I didn't love that definition, but I had to shift

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it. You know, I had to, I had to do that. But think a little bit about perhaps how all of those skills that your teaching and your acting provided you with fit

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into being an administrator. Oh, they were perfect. They were just phenomenal. First of all, I deal with the fact that the show is going to

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go on whether you feel like you're ready or you're not. And so being focused like that, meeting deadlines, you don't show up to rehearsal without your lines. So it became, we were the best department in the world at

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meeting deadlines because that's what we did every day is meet deadlines, and the ability to vision creatively about where you could be down the road, the ability to solve problems, to work with people who can be kooky.

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You know, theatre people are a little kooky and instead of asking the light bulb be changed, they may scream that the light bulb needs to be changed. So how do you manage people who are very sensitive creatively?

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How do you calculate a budget? How do you plan a budget? All of those pieces I knew from stage managing or I knew from courses I'd had in the department, or I knew from

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directing. And so I was putting all that together. How can you be articulate? Can you answer questions on your feet?

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How do you work with young people who haven't found their vision yet? They want to be movie stars, but they don't realize that you have to be an artist first in most cases.

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What is the importance of a liberal arts education to a theatre major? Well, that is something that I could translate from what I knew that I had gotten, that I knew I could go anywhere in this

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country and work somehow at a good job because I had had this wonderful liberal arts education. And that didn't just come from theatre. That came from the rest of Towson, these wonderful teachers

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I had in English and history. And I would have added 19 minors if life had allowed because I had so many good teachers here that ignited that passion for me.

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So I can... The fact that you have to meet certain commitments in an extremely excellent way is very fine preparation for being a chairperson or a dean or anything else.

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Well, that comes down the pipe too, is suddenly the College of Fine Arts and Communication is deanless, and they're looking for someone on an interim basis once again to sit in on that position.

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And you are asked and you accept that role. How is that different? Suddenly it's not just your small group of theater folks. Now you've got the artists and the musicians and the

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communication folks as well. Well, the former dean was a very good friend of mine, and his death in a car accident was one of the saddest things I've ever experienced.

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And so when they asked me to step in for a year, he died on a Saturday, I was dean on Monday. And to walk into his office and take over his world was one of the most difficult things I've ever, ever done.

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But he was not crazy about being a dean and he talked about it a lot. He preferred to be in rehearsal. He was an artist, he was a musician.

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He was moving into dance and all kinds of wonderful stuff. And he liked that more than the administrative piece. So I didn't see anything interesting about being a Dean. I just, from what I had heard, that was just not a great job.

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But I said, sure, I'll do it for a year, but I'm not going to be a candidate. And they went, well, you can decide that later. And so five years later,

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what I found there was almost identical to what I found going into the theatre major. Now here my learning curve becomes a huge circle and I've got pre-law and marketing and television and radio and dance

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and trombone and ceramics and I had to learn all those disciplines. Then I got excited about creating a vision for the college.

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Where could the college go together? Well, first of all, we needed a new building and I had already started a new building process as a chairperson. But now we opened it up, tried to get mass comm in there, but it

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was too late. But we squeezed dance in there. So now we were going to build a building that would pull us all together in a way, a design that would have us working more

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together and not in segments. The building had been designed in three places where you could easily not ever run into an art teacher. Well, now we were designing the building so you'd have to run

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into each other and all those collaborations could work. And I got so excited about how that could happen and how could we all work together on a project and what new courses could we have?

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And what about if we moved electronic media and film away from mass com and they did a separate major and they wanted to do that? We made that happen and I think you can tell I got real excited

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about all of that. And then again, I was able to focus on the students. What are we doing through bureaucracy, paperwork, requirements that may or may not be necessary, curriculum that

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may not have been refreshed for a while? What are we doing for them? Are we staying focused on them? Are we making sure they are successful?

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Or are we doing this for us? And so one of the things I felt most was is that we reshaped the curriculum, how it was structured and the rotation in which it was offered.

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So that students' needs came first. Not what days you want to teach on faculty, but what days do the students need that course to be quite frank. And so we started to focus on student success and that was

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very rewarding to do, particularly in that college where it's just such incredibly gifted people. So I enjoyed every minute of being dean. And that was a huge surprise.

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So I thought, well, maybe I'll just retire as a dean. I had taught here a long time because I'd started when I was 22. So and then Dick reminded me, my husband reminded me that that

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would be a very bad idea because I wasn't ready, and he certainly wasn't ready for me to be full time doing nothing. And I said I knew I wasn't ready, but I could see myself

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staying here until I retired. And then this opportunity at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania came about. I didn't seek it out.

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I mean, the phone just rang and they said, we'd like you to be a candidate. And I said, where is Wilkes? I'd not heard of it.

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Private school, small private school with pharmacy and engineering. And I thought, you really don't want me. I'm from the arts.

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That's a fairly small program in your school. And evidently I'd been nominated by a couple of people. And to this day, I don't know who that is. And I said, well, I don't know.

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And this was for the Provost position there? Provost position there. Yeah. And how large a campus is it?

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It's in the middle of downtown Wilkes Barre, and it's about 3,000 students, private school, high tuition. And I thought that would really be unusual. Yes.

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So I thought, well, I'll go for the interview, but that is certainly not something I think I'll do. But I did. And when the pharmacy program said in the interview, so what

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do you know about pharmacy? And I said nothing. I'm glad you make Excedrin, but I really know nothing about pharmacy.

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And they seemed to like that answer. It was honest. But oh my goodness did I love being with pharmacy students and the nursing students. And now I have nursing and engineering and pharmacy and

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premed and all of these other things in my portfolio. And they had some struggles there curricularly, which I was able to... And hadn't had a new program in a lot of years. So I started seven new programs there the first year and a half.

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Yeah. With what kind of emphasis? I'm not going to ask you to name all seven. Yeah, entrepreneurship, graphic design,

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were the two biggies. A master's in creative writing. Not writing writing, but creative writing, all done online with authors from around the world.

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Sounds like that creative element is sort of finding its way to Wilkes University. Yeah. And that's what was so delightful, to take all that

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creative, because now I'm not acting anymore. I did act, well, through the time I was dean at the Maryland Arts Festival. But now that I go to Wilkes, I have not acted again.

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There's no time for that. I cannot... I cannot imagine where you could fit that in. Couldn't do it.

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It isn't fair to people you'd be acting with to never be able to rehearse with them. And so I had to redefine again. And then people would say to me, are you OK about not acting?

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And I would say, yes, I am. I'm fine. And how did you redefine that made that OK?

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I put the creativity in the work. Put the creativity in the work. Yeah. And then a phone call again four years later from Mansfield

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University in upper state Pennsylvania. Now we're back to public school, but small, about 3,500 students, small public school in rural Pennsylvania. And I thought, again, rural Pennsylvania, I'm a city girl.

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I don't think so. This is a presidency? This is a presidency now. Yes. And so that's a whole different kind of whole, with different

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kinds of responsibilities. And what are you thinking in terms of what you would bring to that kind of position? It was a campus in trouble. I see.

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And some of the similar things that Wilkes had had, no new programs recently, dwindling resources, unionized faculty that made it somewhat inflexible to move people around and solve problems.

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A very nice liberal arts base, strong music program, no theatre program, very different. But by that time I was getting excited about different. Because they were all paying off in different ways.

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And one of the things about Wilkes I did not care for was how much debt the students were getting in to pay that tuition. So I had a hunger to get back to public education, where I think we deliver real well, particularly at Towson, and the

00:27:31.160 - 00:27:45.610

students don't rack up that debt. So I was not ever comfortable in the private high tuition. I just didn't feel genuine about that. So now I have an opportunity to go make a difference in a small

00:27:45.610 - 00:27:56.760

school that needed help in rural upper state Pennsylvania. And the challenge. And the challenge. That it needed help. That it needed help. Yeah.

00:27:58.200 - 00:28:03.640

And how long did you stay? Five years. So I was gone ten, now I've been gone 10 years.

00:28:03.640 - 00:28:14.570

Yes. And what kinds of things did you accomplish while you were there that you were wanting to do? Well, one of the biggest things is that there had been no new

00:28:14.570 - 00:28:28.840

residence halls in 40 years. So we got new residence halls and that was a big, big chunk of my time was doing that. The students were not heavily engaged with the campus.

00:28:28.840 - 00:28:41.400

They went home. So I built up student affairs and a new structure for student affairs and a way that the students who lived in the residence halls could pull in the commuters.

00:28:42.000 - 00:28:54.380

So that we became more of a campus community and not a commuter school, even though... For example, one of the things we did was we made a commuter floor in the residence hall so commuters could stay

00:28:54.380 - 00:29:08.770

over when they wanted to stay over and... In bad weather or they didn't feel so hot, they could go lie down in a room and... You had to keep the doors open. It wasn't, like, a risky situation, but... So they felt

00:29:08.770 - 00:29:18.320

more welcomed. The residence... People in the residence halls adopted commuter students so they would be a part of something exciting about the campus.

00:29:18.640 - 00:29:33.720

We increased diversity significantly as well, and we were doing really well at that at the end. We started a new master's degree all online in leadership development for working professionals.

00:29:33.720 - 00:29:52.660

We got a chance to do some more new programs, and built up a way of addressing fracking because the fracking was now intruding on the bucolic nature of this area that had been there for years and years, bringing a ton of money and environmental

00:29:52.660 - 00:30:02.840

problems. So how do you navigate how this windfall of money when you've got wells everywhere and the political lay of the land about that?

00:30:02.920 - 00:30:19.940

Just, how do you walk that? And this is not in the best of economic times. No, it was rugged, and it was one of the smallest of the state schools and support for higher education in Pennsylvania is

00:30:19.940 - 00:30:34.040

nothing like it is in Maryland. It is so poor compared to what we have in Maryland that it was a struggle for the school to stay open. And that's what I wanted to achieve is it would become more

00:30:34.040 - 00:30:44.720

thriving and not at risk. And I interrupted you. How did you negotiate that? The fracking and the new money and the politics and...

00:30:44.720 - 00:30:58.280

One-on-one relationships with people, taking the time to discuss it as you went. We got some very significant gifts while we were there from the people who owned land, lived elsewhere now.

00:30:58.280 - 00:31:08.680

So they would gave us the wells and the gas from the wells came to the university. But meanwhile our water safety levels were dropping.

00:31:08.680 - 00:31:26.110

So you talk to them and you... So, person to person relationships until it begins to work out, which you can do better in a small school in a rural area. I can walk downtown and talk to somebody about it, and a place

00:31:26.110 - 00:31:42.320

the size of Towson, though I still use that, it's not as easy to solve major problems like that. So five years, it's that magic five years and all of a sudden somebody gives you a call.

00:31:42.320 - 00:31:49.520

Yes. And says, how about coming back to Towson? And I said, is Bob leaving? And they said yes, he is.

00:31:49.520 - 00:32:07.020

And I said, well, I just don't know. Gosh, it would be so wonderful I can't even think about what to say. And then I thought about it and said, can you go home

00:32:07.020 - 00:32:15.600

again? Excellent question. Can you really do that? Would they take me seriously because I'm from Towson?

00:32:16.200 - 00:32:25.040

In the end, if they weren't going to do that, I wasn't going to put my neck on the line for that. I had a perfectly fine presidency. I didn't need to do that.

00:32:27.160 - 00:32:38.330

I didn't want to be rejected by Towson. You can throw it... I'm being very personal here, but anybody can reject you. But when your own institution says we want somebody better, I

00:32:38.330 - 00:32:48.200

was wondering how I would handle that. Dick said to... My husband said, buck up. And you know, if they don't, they don't. But you really should get in this search.

00:32:48.960 - 00:32:56.520

And so I did. I just threw my hat in the ring and I said, whatever happens, whatever's supposed to happen will happen. But that must have been exciting.

00:32:57.200 - 00:33:04.040

It was very exciting when I made the top twelve. Up until then, I was like, oh, my gosh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

00:33:04.280 - 00:33:17.280

Then when I made the first cut to the top twelve and got to the airport interviews, then it became more of a reality that at least I'm one of twelve because there were so many candidates, I hear.

00:33:17.440 - 00:33:35.560

Then it got very, very exciting and the stakes for me got higher and higher because I wanted to come back so badly because in my deepest heart, I truly wanted to give back. You heard me describe what I got from Towson.

00:33:36.000 - 00:33:52.960

So at the end of my career, to be able to give back to the place that gave you everything is about as good as life gets. I don't know what could possibly be better. Now, not that it isn't challenging and days

00:33:52.960 - 00:34:02.840

I don't think I'm going to walk away and go to Florida or something, but there are days when you just ask yourself what you're thinking. But that's because it's so wonderfully challenging.

00:34:03.360 - 00:34:16.680

But to be here on a daily basis and spend time with students who looked like youm had the same insecurities that you had here. And I can say to them, I sat there and had these feelings and I didn't sit somewhere and have them.

00:34:16.680 - 00:34:27.700

I sat there and had those feelings. Here's what I think I can teach now in a different way. I mentor a whole bunch of students because I just have to

00:34:27.700 - 00:34:39.460

or I'll die. But they come in and we talk and I go down to the student union and it's for me as much as it is for them and guide them in their dreams because I want them to be alert that they

00:34:39.460 - 00:34:49.400

can plan all they want for what they're going to do, but it isn't what they're going to do. Things are going to drop in from the gods, drop in from the clouds that you don't expect.

00:34:49.800 - 00:35:08.520

So how do you learn how to shift your dreams when the time comes? And meanwhile, this place that's in my heart so deeply, I'm getting to come full circle and just give right on back. And it is the most beautiful thing in my life.

00:35:09.560 - 00:35:25.360

Very special. One of the things that I would love to have you comment on is, and it was something you said in your first speech to the university community when you had just shortly arrived.

00:35:25.360 - 00:35:39.200

And it's something that you brought up again in your inaugural address. And that's this focus on teacher education. For a while we sort of moved away from that emphasis, I think

00:35:39.200 - 00:36:00.520

perhaps to establish a different identity for the institution. But one of the things that you have done is made very strong, very definitive moves to reestablish the preeminence of teacher ed in Maryland at Towson University.

00:36:00.520 - 00:36:20.890

Would you talk a little bit about that and the, what am I trying to say? Awarding the Presidential Scholar moniker to Nancy Grasmick was certainly another indication of your commitment to

00:36:20.890 - 00:36:36.840

that element of the university mission. Well, Towson's not going to be a Research 1 institution. And though it was moving somewhat in that direction, there was never any funding or approval to move in

00:36:36.840 - 00:36:47.800

that direction as strongly as it looked like it might. Now, that doesn't mean research is not important. And goodness knows it's important to good teaching, but we are teaching institution.

00:36:48.400 - 00:36:55.040

That's why people come here. They come here for the individual attention. They're going to do research. Our undergraduates are going to do it with faculty.

00:36:55.600 - 00:37:13.000

And we have 150 years, almost now 150 years of this reputation. We supply more teachers than any any other school in Maryland. But we've lost track that that's what brought us to the dance.

00:37:13.920 - 00:37:29.840

And while we have many, many fine professional programs, which there's plenty of room for in the new strategic plan priorities that we've developed, we're not going to forget that we're, teacher education, teacher preparation is primary here.

00:37:30.320 - 00:37:42.950

And so that's important to me. There is an absolute national mandate to completely change pre-K through 12 education. We're not cutting it in this country and there's not a whole

00:37:42.950 - 00:37:58.520

lot of people think we are. And we need to be, I think, in that and leading that conversation on the national level, not just in Maryland. And Nancy Grasmick has a ton of experience on the national level

00:37:58.520 - 00:38:10.320

and she's gotten us in that arena already. Now, she couldn't have done that if we didn't have a College of Education and education across all the colleges and people who are willing deans to move in that direction so quickly.

00:38:10.880 - 00:38:21.760

But if we're not leading that conversation, then who in the heck is? Because you do not have a whole lot of institutions with this long a history of excellence in teacher preparation.

00:38:21.760 - 00:38:30.520

So I don't want to stay on the bottom someplace while someone else leads this. We ought to be able to be the ones leading this national mandate, the solution for it.

00:38:31.320 - 00:38:48.040

So it is an opportunity which I think we shouldn't miss. So we have ten wonderful priorities now coming out of the strategic plan and this is right up front. I think it's where we belong. And especially in relationship

00:38:48.040 - 00:39:01.720

perhaps to STEM. Oh, well, the amazing thing to me is how well we do in STEM. STEM has historically over time sort of belonged to Maryland and the medical school and UMBC.

00:39:02.240 - 00:39:14.960

Well, people haven't realized that first of all, we supply the science teachers for the state, but we have to do it better because kids don't hit STEM until much later in elementary school.

00:39:14.960 - 00:39:28.700

And sometimes the teachers don't know as much as the kids. This is what we have to begin to reshape. So we have gotten some significant grants to produce... In four years, we'll be producing 251 STEM teachers

00:39:28.700 - 00:39:43.040

certified in math and science and special ed and be able to use technology across the board. And we'll keep doing that year after year because of these wonderful grants we've gotten for teaching of STEM.

00:39:43.560 - 00:39:55.720

But what people also do not realize is if you took all the teachers out of the College of Fisher, we still are a primary server of workforce development in non-teaching-related STEM jobs.

00:39:56.720 - 00:40:06.640

Well, I don't think everybody knows that about Towson. I'm sure they don't. And so now when system talks about STEM, they tend to put us in there too.

00:40:08.000 - 00:40:14.960

Whether it's teacher... It's not just teacher preparation, but it's, are you kidding me? This many people are getting jobs coming out of your STEM college?

00:40:15.480 - 00:40:31.470

Yes. So I want... The STEM fits in in two ways. And again, Nancy and others, our two deans have done so much to raise money for this already that it's almost like five years'

00:40:31.470 - 00:40:44.110

work has been done in a year and we're ready to go. But that's with your leadership because you feel that that's important. I do, and I think, you know, leadership and focusing a vision

00:40:44.110 - 00:40:56.040

is important, but leaders don't get the job done. It's the folks I just mentioned. They get it done. So here we are a year, a little more than a year later.

00:40:56.680 - 00:41:08.680

And how are you feeling about your decision to come home? I'm loving it. I'm loving it. I have some major challenges that sometimes make my day not

00:41:08.680 - 00:41:25.920

so wonderful, but separate from those, it continues to be the absolute honor of my life to be able to walk in here and do this every day. And I get paid for it, which is sometimes... Should never say this

00:41:25.920 - 00:41:36.800

on tape, but but I can't believe I get paid to do something that I enjoy so much. And so, yeah, it's a daily honor. Truly is.

00:41:38.760 - 00:41:57.120

Maravene, what have we forgotten that you would like to say about teaching generally, about the evolution of your career personally, is there anything there that we have just blatantly ignored or missed or anything?

00:41:58.000 - 00:42:11.240

No, I just have this underpinning of a philosophy that I share with the students every single chance I get, whether it be a large speech or talking to one student, which is, how is this world going to be better

00:42:11.520 - 00:42:26.920

because you got an education? Not, yes, you want to get a job and yes, you want to have a car and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, is anything in this world going to be better because of you or not?

00:42:28.640 - 00:42:40.960

That guides me and I would like it to guide our faculty and our staff. But most importantly of all, I want the students to know that when they leave here, they're going to be lifelong learners.

00:42:40.960 - 00:42:48.240

Use it to make positive change. You can do that as a teacher, you can do that as a saxophone player. You can do that as an artist.

00:42:48.240 - 00:43:02.320

You can do that as an athlete, but do it and get passionate about doing it well because there's a zillion people out there doing stuff in a mediocre way. We don't need any more of that.

00:43:02.840 - 00:43:13.520

So get passionate about your own personal excellence, which is what I want the university to be doing for them and then them to go out and do for other people. So that's sort of what drives me.

00:43:16.800 - 00:43:32.240

One last question. You have been a teacher since probably before you graduated as an undergraduate, but certainly right after that. And although you say you had to give up teaching long about the

00:43:32.240 - 00:43:46.250

time you became a Provost, you continue to teach in a variety of different capacities. I mean, this is something that you have not left. What would you say to young people who are considering

00:43:46.250 - 00:43:59.900

teaching as a career choice? Can't possibly pick anything any better. It just can't be done. You walk into that classroom every day, and all of those

00:43:59.900 - 00:44:10.520

young people or older people are looking up at you as a role model, and you're having an opportunity to influence and transform people's lives. Now who gets to do this?

00:44:11.840 - 00:44:23.420

So yeah. And you get healthcare and you get summers off and you can be with your family at Christmas. And you learn every day. To me, it's the most glorious

00:44:23.420 - 00:44:33.440

life I could possibly imagine for anybody. Thank you. Thank you very much.