Valley City State University big education with a small town feel

0:00the burning heart from Rocky. I love it. I love it, Eric Johnson. Thank you. Yeah. So my name is Joe Deutsch. I'm filling in today on afternoons live for Tyler Axness. And as I stated before I'm joined by my producer Eric Johnson. And we're back. And I am excited to have another guest come in here. I'll drop full disclosure right away out of the shoot. I'm a Valley City State University alumni. What went there in the 90s to become a physical education teacher and to wrestle and been a part of the university ever since then. And my son Jake is a fifth year senior playing football at Valley City State right now. I get to serve on the foundation board. And the most exciting part about it is I am joined right now by the executive director of the foundation of

1:00Valley City State. Corey Anderson. Corey, how are we doing today? Hey, we are doing awesome. It is privilege for me to be able to be with you today, Joe. Yeah. Well, thank you. I know you got a big event downtown today in Valley City right that involves the college and the town. Yes, we do. We have what we call summer vikes on central. We had our convocation on campus today where we kind of welcome in all of the new students and kind of really just kick off the end of the new student orientation. And then we cap it off tonight where we gather at the walk bridge just off the campus and we walk downtown. All of the students on the campus will walk downtown into the central avenue area. And they have a committee there. It does just a great job. And so the college meeting, the community and the tripwire, the band is playing down there. There's a bunch of food vendors. It's just a really nice and cool event. Yeah, I have to say one of my favorite

2:07things I didn't realize when I when I was coming to Valley City, but Valley City is located 60 miles west of Fargo. And it's a beautiful smaller community with a university that I always say that the professors know you by name. If you don't make it to class, they might call you on the phone and ask you where you're at. I stayed in the dorm named Colsto where if you woke up at 10.01 and realized the class just started, you could roll out of bed, run across the street and being class by 10.05. Am is that fair, Corey? I think that's really fair and and you know the other thing about that personal attention, I look at your lineup that you had today as you co-hosted and knowing you when you were here and I got to take part, you forgot about your little football part that you took part in as well. But knowing you, I also look at this lineup and go if if Joe Deutsche is going to split his heart six ways, it would be divided like it was today with your guests. And I think that's

3:12one of those unique things about us here and what we know about our students and our people and our graduates and in our alumni that go out is we really try to getting immersed with them even after their days are done here on the campus and and that's the the fun of what we do. Yeah, I mean, Valley City State, like you said, it's all about relationships, it's all about forming bonds, collaborations, working together for a lifetime, you learn a lot more than just the content that comes from from the classroom and and that's why I have a deep appreciation for it. Similar to what I was talking about with Central Cass earlier in the small town, atmosphere, and how the community supports the school and the school supports the community, it's no different at Valley City State University. Yeah, you're absolutely right and and we are fortunate to get people from all those communities and we have that young football player from Calcitan that it's a good thing he's a lot like his mom as far as athletic ability and and he shows that on the field

4:13every Saturday and has gotten off to a really good start. Yeah, I mean, we got we had to buy this week but we got a big win against Dickinson last week, right? That's always that's always a marquee win especially when you can get it at home. Yeah, because I think it's kind of been a benchmark the last few years, they've been kind of the obstacle in the way it was the things that we've been trying to do and and that goes back, you know, not 10 years, not 20 years, it goes back 30 years. It's it's just kind of always been the road is either between us and Dickinson most of the time and and so yeah, the football team's off to a good start one and one, you have a tough 10 to seven loss against the division two opponent and Southwest state and then the bounce back and Dickinson at home and I'll give us a chance to get a little bit of arrest as we get ready to get into the heart of our schedule. Yeah, I mean, you know, you like you said, we got a buy week coming up this week. I mean, you know, you as the foundation director, you you got a lot

5:13of you got a lot of hats to wear, right? Because you have to obviously, you know, support and or connect donors with support for the athletic programs, but but it also it also goes far beyond the athletic programs and goes to to the university itself and the and any and every student that steps foot on Valley City State's campus. I have to say before I let you talk about it a little bit, you know, you know, looking at the breadth of of scholarship and and of opportunities and everything that are outside of athletics is is quite profound. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, and I think that our university did a great job in the mid 90s of kind of having that vision to see what was ahead and in the things that we needed to do to keep our education affordable and we really concentrated on digging into that and this past year we had 46% of our students who attended full-time face to face had 100% of their tuition paid for by gift aid. Now that could

6:17be a combination of scholarship and financial aid and and different types of things that they might be participating in on campus that would assist them, but still that number is really, really high and I think it just speaks to the affordability of, you know, we want to be able to be in a situation and we know that we produce tremendous teachers. The most teachers for Capita and North Dakota, we have over 1,500 of them in the state right now and people and administrative leadership in those positions, but it's not just in education, it's in the health sciences, it's in the business field, it's in other professional fields, Fish and Wildlife, which is a very unique major and the university has just done a lot of work to try to position ourselves to make it still affordable and something that if you need that education where you want to be one on one with a professor that knows your name that can take you maybe a little bit farther than you

7:18you can on your own, where the place for that to happen and you know I think for a university our size we've just made remarkable investments on our campus over the last several years. The buildings are not only valuable in helping recruit students but to retain students and give them a great experience and that's kind of what all that plan was down as they work on that in the mid-90s and it's just been incumbent upon us to continue the work that had been done by a lot of really good individuals. Yeah, I mean we'll talk about when we get back from the break, we're going to talk about your new facility that thing, we're going to talk about the frontier conference which is really new to you guys but I do have to say that I've had the opportunity as a professor in physical education, teacher education and recreation and to come back to Valley City State the last 20 plus years and present to the students and just talk about opportunity and tell them I was once in their shoes and the beautiful thing about Valley City

8:20State is it provides a foundation for you that you can take many different directions and so anyway like I said when we get back from the break, Cory you're going to stick around with me I hope and we're going to we're going to get after that new facility that you got there on campus or how it's coming and we'll talk about the frontier league. So thank you very much we'll definitely be right back from break time Joe Deutsch, this is Afternoons Live, I'm guest hosting for Tyler Axenis. A little Bon Jovi, that's what I like to hear, welcome back to Afternoons Live, my name is Joe Deutsch and I'm sitting in today for Tyler Axenis but I still got his producer Eric Johnson and he's kept keeping this train on the rails. So I'm welcome I'd like to welcome back I'm joined at the moment by Cory Anderson who's the executive director of development at Valley City State University and before the break Cory and I were just talking about Valley City

9:21State as a university, how it gives that small town feel and is appealing to many kids, very appealing to me, very appealing to my son but now I want to kind of touch on you recently changed over to the frontier conference, Cory which is primarily based on the West Coast I think right and so talk a little bit about the challenges that come with that the new rivalries or the new opportunities I know we get to go on a plane trip which Valley City State football never done before last year we get to go on a plane trip to Reading California for a game here in a couple weeks that I'm super excited to be on the plane with the with the players and the coaches and the team so go ahead and talk to us a little bit about the frontier league and what that how that is different than what Valley City State was used to and all the schools outside of the NDSU and UND and the state were all in the same conference together yeah and you know ideally those days were the best days

10:23if we could stay with all of those schools and we could have found a way to have everybody back together doing that it's the awesome way to do it and and I think this this was beyond your years but when it was the Dak 10 the Dakota athletic conference it was it was really one of the best conferences in the US and we know in athletics conference affiliation now changes well everything changes but especially conference affiliation and so we hit we got to a point with the North Star Athletic Association where we had some members that decided to go other directions maybe because of the regional proximity to other schools and so we were left in a situation where if you don't have enough schools you need six core schools to be able to qualify for the national playoffs and so when that happened we looked to the west and the frontier conferences really originated in Montana and most of the most of those schools are Montana schools and

11:26and in football it just happened to be that the Cascade conference didn't have enough schools to be their own conference so they joined in to be an affiliated member with the frontier league and so that's what leads us to all of these you know long trips we would host one long trip a year and then we go on one long trip a year and by long trip we mean plain flight and and so you know that has just kind of been the nature of the beast and then we've had to just change accordingly now football is the one that experiences that that long trip situation our basketball volleyball baseball and softball teams they're not quite in that situation they would still have the long travel to Helena Montana or to to Western to Dylan or to butto different places like that but generally as a rule they don't have to charter the planes to to make their trips

12:26sure well you know I mean that so you're should we recruit a different athlete now right and and recruit a different athlete and you're not necessarily always recruiting somebody from from North Dakota that's used to this weather so you know one of the amenities that most all universities athletic programs now have is indoor indoor facility and indoor turf facility for the football team to practice in in November or whatever obviously you want to be competitive obviously you're getting that done please tell us a little bit about that project and how people can be a part of they want to well you bet um if you haven't been to to valley city lately and you come in the main exit to valley city I think what you see going down eighth avenue is pretty striking um we've essentially taken our you know our historic W e osman field house which we refer to as the bubble and connected it to a massive new indoor facility and and the the centerpiece of this you know it's more than just 70,000 square feet there's 50,000 55,000 square feet of turf so it's roughly 85 yards

13:29of a football field that way but but it's more than just the football practice area it gives us you know sprinting and field event space for our track and field teams for their indoor track and field preparation our softball and baseball training areas batting cages bullpins you know all of those things are included included with this along with the support areas which would be athletic training facility the the weight room and we know that North Dakota winters aren't going anywhere so instead of losing four or five months about door training opportunities we're creating a facility that can be used you know for 12 months a year and that's transformational not only for recruiting but also for the experience experience of our of our current students and our community members as well all right Corey I'm up against the clock my man but I appreciate it what I just indoor softball games are going to be being played in this facility so I'm up against the clock but I appreciate you coming on today Valley City State University I'm Joe Deutsch filling in

14:32for Tyler Axnes and this has been Corey Anderson with Valley City State University we'll see after the break