Matt Harmon: Just about at the midpoint of the fall semester at Monmouth University offers a great time to catch up with University President Patrick Leahy to talk of the latest happenings around campus. This is faculty member Matt Harmon. Time for another episode of our Monmouth Weekly podcast series. Thanks to Zoe for listening. Matt Harmon: Beautiful October afternoon as we get up and going here with our Mammoth Weekly podcast. A fantastic start to the fall semester, about six weeks in with fall break coming up, which seems crazy in and of itself with University President Patrick Leahy. I'm faculty member Matt Harmon. President Leahy, a good morning to you and I, and I'll say it, it seems crazy to think that this coming weekend is fall break, which puts us about midway through the semester. So far, it's just flying by. Patrick Leahy: Yeah. Good morning, Matt. Good to be with you as always. I can't believe it. I mean, this, this week marks the midpoint of the semester and I just can't believe it. I don't know. Is that a measure that we're, we're getting older and the time's just flying by. I'm not sure, but it just seems to go more and more quickly and so many positive things going on at Monmouth. I look forward to talking through those with you. Matt Harmon: Yeah. We have our October episode here with Monmouth Weekly and, and about six weeks into the semester. And, and I'll say one of maybe the highlights of the first couple of weeks is what took place over the course of this past weekend, which was open house. It's an opportunity for the university to an essence show itself off to those that come down to check things out. It's clearly not the only day that people do that, but it is a big day on campus. I know you had a, a big part of it walking around, meeting people your introductions to, to everyone who is part of it, as you got kind of a sense. And clearly the weather helped cuz it was a, a beautiful day to highlight the campus. What was your sense of, of talking to people that were there to check Monmouth out? Patrick Leahy: It's such a, a proud day for me as the president because the key for us is to get Monmouth University introduced more, more fully to prospective students and their par and their parents. And one way to do that is to have them actually on the campus and to introduce to them the, the, the incredible campus that we have that integrates, you know, historic buildings with state of the art facilities. It is one of the, one of the most proud days of the year for me. The, the feedback we've gotten has been fantastic. I mean, you just can't find many people who come to campus who walk the grounds and more importantly, who meet the people associated with Mammouth who don't walk away impressed. And this is this is our goal with Open House. It was very well attended as you mentioned, it was a beautiful day to, to showcase what we're all about here. So I think, you know, it was a really, really positive day for, for this university. Matt Harmon: Two, two follow ups. One in fun. One more serious. The fun. As you and I were talking before at hit recording our podcast, I learned that we have a, a loyal listener that was part of open House with our Mon with Weekly podcast, Great news. Patrick Leahy: So I'm walking around and I run into a family. I introduce myself and, and Rich says to me, Oh, of course, Dr. Lehi, I follow your Mammoth Weekly podcast. Every, every time it's offered, I listen. And he had very complimentary things to say about you to Dr. Harmon, but he is the parent of a current student and also the parent of a perspective student. So it was such a delight to hear from him that he tunes in regularly. And he sees this podcast as you know, a wealth of information as to what's going on at, at his sons and hopefully his son and daughters university. He is from Long Island, so he gets here from time to time, but relies heavily on our, on our sessions for good information. So shout out to Rich for for his positive comments over the weekend. Matt Harmon: Rich, the check is in the mail. I appreciate you grabbing the university president and letting him know how important this podcast is to the overall feel of Monmouth. The follow up to that. And obviously the, the more important part, you have spent considerable time in your tenure here at Monmouth trying to enhance the campus. Is open house a day where even you in the, let's say, hustle and bustle of we gotta get this done onto the next, we gotta get this done onto the next, where you can almost kinda walk the campus under a little less stress and pressure and almost kind of take it all in a little bit more. Patrick Leahy: Well, it starts usually the week before when I walk the campus. I try really hard to put myself in the perspective of a prospective family member, you know, a prospective dad, and I try to identify things that maybe, you know, we walk past every day because we're so used to it and try to troubleshoot those things. And our facilities team does such a great job preparing the campus. But, you know, as I walked around this year, I mean, you know, we've activated the Great Hall for the benefit of students in a way that we haven't in years. We got great feedback there. Students walk in you know, not only here, but over to the Guggenheim Library, we're so impressed with our historic buildings, but then they get a chance to walk through the School of Science and then over to the business school quad, and then over to the Ocean First Bank Center. And they see that we are integrating state-of-the-art facilities with those historic buildings. Then the little things, you know, like as you, we've been talking about enhancing the space for career development, which is so important to our students and creating new space for intercultural center for all of our students, but in particular our increasingly diverse student body. So a real sense of pride for me to be able to to showcase the campus in that way. Matt Harmon: Is it a, a process? I'm curious to know more about it, because having been at Monmouth one way or the other, essentially from the, the early to mid nineties through now, so almost 30 years, I do the same thing. I, I don't think walking the campus and being on it all the time, you, you, you fully appreciate it because I can tell you that over the course of even this semester, I saw some of the facilities personnel out and I stopped to say, Wow, you guys do a great job. And, and I think one of the things that's interesting is everyone who works in that area, specifically just targeting them, they take so much pride in what they do and making sure the campus looks as good as it can. And I won't even say for open house, like it's a daily process that I don't think people really can fathom how much goes into it. Patrick Leahy: I mean, they do such a great job, and you know, those gestures on your part to thank them when you see them, that they go such a long way. I mean, I see, I see our facilities team, you know, literally on their hands and needs, you know, pulling weeds and spreading mulch and, and the like to to prepare the campus not only, as you say, for our high profile events, but for day to day activities as well. So we are constantly, Matt, constantly, you know, enhancing, tweaking, trying to make more functional the campus because it is a really important asset to any college or university. But I always add to that comment as I, as important as the campus is, I always quote the president of a university years ago who said, we could meet in a tent and we'd be a great university. And his point was, as important as the facility is to enhancing learning, it is really what happens between a faculty member and a student. That is the heart of the matter. And so we're just trying to continually develop a, a campus where those kind of interactions between new faculty members and our students and, and, and our staff that work with students and our coaches and all that where that, that magic can happen. So that's always important to remember Matt Harmon: That. A touch of irony with your comment, because within the course of the last couple years, I did teach a couple of classes under the tents that were outside. Patrick Leahy: You know what? That's right. That was, that comment was a hundred years ago, but it's, it should be updated for a pandemic year. Matt Harmon: Let's let, let's get into, as, as we mentioned, we're just about at the midpoint with fall break coming up. Our last episode, which we recorded back in September, right at the start of the semester, was leading into your convocation. And you talked about certain priorities that the university will have, not just during the course of this semester, which is the most immediate one, But over the course of this, this academic year, if you want to maybe just grab even one or two things that you feel like is important for listeners like Rich, let's say, that might not be here every day to know this is where Monmouth is heading and this is what's important to them. Patrick Leahy: Well just mention a few things. As you mentioned, I did articulate these at our fall convocation, but let me share with you a a few. The first is, we are looking at the possibility of academic reorganization. Just making sure that our departments are clustered the way it makes the most sense to serve students in the future. The second thing we're doing is looking at building our scholarship and research infrastructure for the benefit of our faculty members. We wanna make sure they stay, you know, as leading experts in their fields, and they need that time to do their own scholarship and research, which enhances the teaching experience for students. So we're focused there. Thirdly, we are focused on health and wellness here. It's such an important topic on college campuses today. And we will be looking at one, a big investment in a student wellness center. So physical investment, and two, we're looking at constantly at ways in which we can enhance the, the healthcare offerings to our faculty and staff who support our students. So we'll be focused on health and wellness. And then the last is we are in the early stages of a major capital campaign, and so much of my time will rightly be dedicated to that. So four major priorities for the fall, which of course will continue to leak into the spring as well. Matt Harmon: President Lehi, if you, if you don't mind, I'll follow up on those four things that you just mentioned, because the, the last of which talking about the capital campaign was something that you spend a little bit of time in our September episode talking about. And, and I guess for the, for the layman, which I would consider myself in a capital campaign, when you're talking about raising money, raising funds for university, is it for the short term immediate use or is this for something for a longer term project? If you could expand a little bit. Patrick Leahy: The short answer is both , maybe that's the easy answer that every time we go into what is a comprehensive campaign, which this is, we will be focused on really three, three things, Matt. One is, are there capital projects that we need to raise outside money to support? That would be sort of, you know, immediate term. We need the resources in the short term, but we're building something for the long run. Another part of it is trying to grow our endowment. And the way endowments work, as you know, is that is an investment in the long term because we only peel off, you know, 5% of our, of our number to support current operations. But that money is banked for the long run to ensure the long term financial health. So that's a big part of it. But there's a third, which is what we call current use. So try to get people to, to donate more generously to our, our mammoth fund and to our access fund and support our marquee events, which we use the proceeds of which right, in the current year in which the money's raised. So the easy answer is both, but that's sort of the way we think of it in those three buckets. Current use endowment for the long run, and then capital projects which we need the money in the short run. But of course those are projects built for the long run. Matt Harmon: When you say capital projects, I mean looking, when we were just talking about the campus, how beautiful it is, How many enhancements have taken place over the course of, of the, the number of x number of years? If, if you had to say, Hey, here's a couple other things that we're really focused on moving forward on, what would those be? Patrick Leahy: Yeah, what we're, we're still trying to get perfect clarity on, on these projects, but the, the one that I have mentioned quite publicly to this point is the, the, the idea of building a, what we're calling a student wellness center, which is in essence an an addition to the Ocean First Bank center, which would allow us to create much better space for sports medicine, not only for our varsity athletes, but for all of our students who are involved in club sports and intramural sports. And the, like, another por portion of that project is to enhance the space for our health studies and phys ed academic programs. They need, they desperately need better space in which to conduct classes. And so we hope to address that challenge in this project. And then the third is to greatly expand our health and fitness center for our students. I mean, if you've been in, in the Ocean First Bank Center lately, you, you know that our fitness center is woefully inadequate to serve the number of students that we have. And we just recognize that and we wanna solve that problem by expanding that because we believe, you know, physical health will lead to improved mental health outcomes as well. So one of the big projects is, is that a wellness center? Then we have all kinds of other campus enhancements. You know, I want to build a, a gateway here on campus, which is a much, a much more refined pedestrian walkway through the center of campus. There are enhancements we wanna make to some of our fields that we have, turn them into synthetic turf fields to make them a lot more usable all year and all times during the day. There's a whole slew of additional smaller campus enhancement projects that fall under the sort of capital projects. The good news is you don't here and there, you know, a hundred million dollar building for this, or a hundred million dollar building for that, that that would be a, a real challenge for us to try to raise the money to do, to do the, a project of that size right now. So we think we can really enhance the student experience and do it at a lot less extensively. Matt Harmon: You know, you're, you're answers today are giving me great follow up questions. Were kind of going, going off the script a little bit when you, when you talk about the student wellness center and having that be something that's more modern, let's just say, and I, I loved your answer of including space for the athletes that are part of club sports or the students that are intermurals. I think you and I spend so much time, often during our podcast because of my connection to athletics, your love of all the varsity sports that we have on campus, we forget there is a huge segment of the student population that are involved with club sports and intermurals that in a lot of ways sometimes go, I hate to use the word unnoticed because it's just part of daily life, but those programs are really important to the success of the overall student experience. Patrick Leahy: I mean, we have a lot more, I think by last count students who participate in the club and intramural sports than we have even involved in the varsity teams. So if we have 600 or so varsity athletes, I think we have another 1500 or so students that undergraduates that are engaged in either club sports or, or intermural sports. And, you know, our thinking is if we make an investment in sports medicine, yes, let's be honest, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll serve our varsity athletes much of the day, but if we're gonna build this asset, why not make that asset available to our club? And intramural athletes as well, because they sprain ankles too, , you know, they, they they run in you know you know, healthcare, sports medicine, athletic training needs as well. And we wanna make sure that any investment we make, we're making for as many of our undergraduate students as possible. So you're right in that you know, we can program it in a way that's space so that, you know, most of the varsity athletes can be served during the day when they're most active. And then in the evenings when intermural and club sports are most active, we can try to keep that facility open for their benefit as well. Matt Harmon: And then speaking more about even potential new programs and, and how to enhance things like that. A new program right now that I know you wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about is the Center for Entrepreneurship, something that on campus, you know, again, to me, entrepreneurship, one of those buzzwords over the course of, of definitely covid because so many people had to be creative in terms of coming up with their own business and thinking of what we do in the communication department with all social media stuff and how people have basically made their own career as an entrepreneur from the technology side of things, having a center for entrepreneurship could be a, a little bit of a, a game changer on campus. Patrick Leahy: Well, I, I said this just the other day, Matt, that I arrived at Monmouth and entrepreneurial activities of pet interest of mine. I just feel like to to your point, it has become such an important skill for most professionals to learn. You know, whether you call it entrepreneurial or innovative or creative, it's a really important skill that employers are looking for, even in their established organization, let alone the true entrepreneur who wants to create his or her own enterprise. I'm a huge fan of it. It just comes from my background. I think it can enhance a college campus and a community in really material ways. I had a ton of fun back at my previous institution building out a state of the art center for entrepreneurship. So I arrived here and I was at once very comforted to, to see that we had a Center for entrepreneurship. So I didn't, I couldn't be accused of proliferating centers because we already had a center. But then as I got to understand it a little bit more, I was even more enthusiastic that over the years that had sort of become a lot less active and it gave me a chance to sort of relaunch it. So I was, you know, thrilled that we had one, but almost more thrilled that I would have a chance to put my, you know, my stamp on a, a 2.0, if you will, to use the technology term. So we have, in fact, under our new business school Dean Rod Dev Agam, we have committed to creating a first rate center for entrepreneurship. We have started the process by hiring a first rate person in Allison Gilbert who just started a few weeks back and is getting around everyone on campus to get introduced. Uh we will create really good space, small, but nonetheless, really good space for our new Center for Entrepreneurship. New programs are gonna get rolled out. The number of people that I have met in the community who to this point do not have a connection to Monmouth, who would be involved here at Monmouth through, you know, the kind of activities that are center for entrepreneurship can offer are, is huge. So it's a great way to add a ton, ton of value to our students, also to our faculty and staff. Some of whom you might might not be surprised are entrepreneurial in their own right and could use some good advice. But also we wanted to become a great asset and resource to our host community as well. So that's embedded firmly in our strategic plan to create a a major center for entrepreneurship. And I'm, I'm really pleased that we're off and running. Matt Harmon: Let's finish with something that is something I I, I feel like we always try to spend some time on, and that is early student success on campus. I will give you the floor to talk first about our Model UN team. Patrick Leahy: Yeah, I just heard, so this is the season where they're com competing, and we were just up in Boston and you know, I love this, Matt. We were competing against Georgetown and Berkeley and University of Chicago and University of Michigan and competed extremely well against those fine institutions. I mean, they're the finest brands in American higher ed. And anytime we get a chance to go up, send our students and get a chance to compete against them and compete well is a, is a real source of pride for me and is really important as a way to signal that Monmouth University. We aren't those institutions yet. Let's, let's be honest, they're a lot older than we are. They're a lot wealthier than we are. They have better brands right now than we do. But how do you get to be like them? You've got to compete with them and you've gotta compete well against them. And you've gotta get people thinking, Oh, Monmouth is a lot like, you know, these schools and not those schools, if you see what I mean. So really good first competition with Model Un. They're, they're, they're on their way to DC soon. They, they always take Dr. Mitchell always takes a group to Oxford and competes in the uk. So really, really exciting. Anytime time our students compete against other really fine students, it's a chance for us to burnish our reputation. Matt Harmon: And then we'll, we'll, we'll finish with the athletics out of things. You mentioned competing against the likes of, of schools that I, I know you enjoy being able to reside over wins football with wins over Lehigh as of late Villanova as of late this past weekend over Albany as of late, just outside the top 25 receiving votes. And part of really a, a push, I spent some time at halftime of the football game with King Rice, the men's basketball coach. Obviously there's excitement around the winner sports about set to get up and going the beginning part of of November. All the, the soccer teams both on the men's and women's side, everyone in essence feel hockey country. Everyone has taken the challenge of the CAA not just, but, and Patrick Leahy: Introducing ourselves to our new CAA competitors in a really, in a really competitive way. You know, your point about football, Matt, you know, we lose the first two games of the year, you know, tough losses because we had fourth quarter leads against U N H and Fordham turns out as the season progresses, those, those really aren't bad losses, cuz those are two really, really good teams you know, nationally ranked or close to being nationally ranked teams. But then think about what we've done in the last four, four games. We invited Georgetown to campus, which, you know, is a particular interest of mine and one handling. Then we go tuned Villanova, a nationally ranked team, number nine, I think at the time, and, and pull off that upset. Then we go to Lehigh and, and beat them Handly, and then we bring another ca, you know, another CAA opponent in Albany here over the weekend and, and win that game and thrilling fashion. Just look at what we've done in the last four, four games in football. Georgetown, Villanova, Lehigh, Albany. I mean, that is what I'm talking about in terms of taking the Monmouth brand and putting it against not just other really fine athletes, but the finest schools in the nation. And to be able to compete well against them is just another little way that we burnish our entire Mammoth University reputation and use football or Model UN or any other series of activities as a way to, to allow that to happen. So I can't tell you how excited I am with this move to the caa. It's, it's gonna end up being, you know, a really, really significant thing in the history of our university Matt Harmon: President Lee. He know you have a busy rest of the day, appreciate you hopping on and giving some time in a beautiful, glorious afternoon here in October. Look forward to catching up with you in the near future. And thanks for your time with this podcast and pushing it forward. Patrick Leahy: You're well. Thank you Matt. And I look forward to continuing this on a regular schedule. I think we've decided maybe a little bit more monthly until you know, events might dictate otherwise. But I, I look forward to continuing this with Matt Harmon: You. Fall break upon us on campus on the back side of that, the second part of the semester. Enjoy the break if you're around the campus community. Look forward to catching up with you again. Four University President Patrick Lehe, faculty member Matt Harmon. We say so long, episode number 42 of our Mon With Weekly podcast series.