MSU-Northern Provost search: Oudshoorn: Challenges, opportunities for Northern

The last candidate interviewed to take the second-in-command spot at Montana State University-Northern said Wednesday he sees challenges for the university, but those challenges also provide opportunities.

Michael Oudshoorn, Ph.D, the last of five candidates to visit Northern's campus, said during a candidate forum Monday that one challenge will be looking at Northern's programs, especially if the university decides to eliminate programs, and looking at ways to strengthen and grow other programs.

But that also provides many opportunities, Oudshoorn added.

"An institution with 1,200 or so students has a lot of opportunity for growth," he said.

Oudshoorn, a native of Australia, is the dean of academic affairs at DeVry College of New York, and has a career that spans 20-some years at the University of Adelaide in Australia, chair of the Department of Computer Science at Montana State University in Bozeman, dean at the University of Texas in Brownsville, and professor in and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

He said his interest in the position at Northern is two-fold - he wants to move back into public education, and he is looking for a more rural lifestyle.

"New York is a crazy place," Oudshoorn said.

He said the kind of lifestyle he found in Bozeman and in southern Texas is something he would like to return to.

"It's a very pleasant pace of life," he said.

Oudshoorn said he likes working in administration, and the duties of the provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs appeals to to him.

"The thing I like is the variety of the job," he said, adding that the job of a professor, department chair or dean tends to be more focused.

He said its duties also help emphasize that the position is just a part of the whole - that perspective is necessary to look at the broader picture, Oudshoorn said.

He said he would have an open-door policy, ready to listen to anyone who wanted to talk about problems - or what the university is doing right - and said he considers the different groups on the campus constituents for the position.

Oudshoorn said he would want everyone to bring their ideas, and complaints, to the table but emphasized that the final decisions would weigh those conversations, but might not be what people asked for.

He said he would want to involve students in the process, including having a group of students he would meet with and also appoint students to represent the student body on committees and working groups - those representatives would bring the student body perspective he said, but added that he would also want to hear from students about their personal opinions and issues.

When asked about the future of libraries, Oudshoorn said he believes that Internet offerings can supplement traditional libraries, but he believes those libraries are an important part of higher education.

"I don't see it going away ... ," he said. "The library to me has a strong place on campus."

He said he is a strong supporter of a liberal arts education in the university setting, something quite different from Australia where the earlier education has that focus. But, he said, providing the critical thinking and communication skills and additional background in English, history and mathematics and sciences benefits the students. Industry also is increasingly looking for that background in job applicants, he said.

As far as where to grow and improve Northern's programming, Oudshoorn said, that would require seeing what skill sets are available, or could be recruited, in the faculty and staff, and talking with industry to find what they are looking for.

That will be one of the challenges, he said: "Looking for opportunities where we can grow and how we should grow," he said.

Obvious opportunities exist in the energy, agricultural and mechanical programs at Northern, Oudshoorn said, and he would like to investigate expanding some of that, such as connecting with other parts of the world with a focus on dryland farming, and also looking at increasing connections with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

He said the university also could investigate increasing its grant-writing and research components, although he likened the expansion of grant support to which came first, the chicken or the egg.

While the university could create a grant office to help apply for and administer grants, more grants probably would have to be awarded before the office could justifiably be created, Oudshoorn said.