Day in the Life with Michael Nietzel

Motivational speaker. Office manager. Radio host. Spokesman. Cheerleader. Michael Nietzel juggles many roles in the course of a day as president of Missouri State University - and he wouldn't have it any other way.

"I'm comfortable with multitasking," Nietzel says after turning off the television in his office, tuned to CNN, during a rare down moment in his morning. "I like a rapid pace."

After a 7 a.m. Friday breakfast meeting of the selective Baron's Club in Hammons Tower, Nietzel heads to Plaster Student Union to give opening remarks to a group of high school students attending a leadership conference. He gives insight into the qualities of a successful leader - the most important of which, he says, is preparation.

"When you go into a meeting or a planning session, or have your individual meetings with people who work for you, you want them to have a lot of confidence that you know their job almost as well as they know it," he tells the students before sending them off to a day of seminars on MSU's campus.

His week always begins with a two-hour meeting of the university's administrative council. He begins planning the agenda on the preceding Tuesday, and each attendee - the university's four vice presidents along with eight other college leaders - has the agenda by noon Friday, so they have the weekend to prepare.

"For us to do what we need to do in two hours, you have to have the written material available to all of us to take home on the weekend," he says.

While the high school conference is a one-time event, Nietzel has some kind of unique event every day. A day earlier, he and other university officials met with city of Springfield staff to talk about traffic and infrastructure issues. His schedule, as he says, is predictable in its uniqueness.

As he walks quickly back to his office from the union, he points with pride to the ongoing renovations at Siceluff Hall, one of the original buildings on the university quadrangle.

"That's Lewis and Clark money," he says of the $6 million project, referring to the state's Lewis and Clark Initiative, which funds upgrades and renovations at Missouri colleges.

In the office, Nietzel has a few minutes to collect his thoughts, a luxury for him, and respond to e-mail - he receives about 100 a day, and his policy is to respond to all of them within 24 hours - before a scheduling meeting with his executive secretaries, Marilyn Dennis and Barb Helvey, and his chief of staff, Paul Kincaid.

The group reviews Nietzel's travel plans for the next week - he has a conference in St. Louis, and alumni events in Nashville, Tenn., and Denver on the itinerary. Travel is common for Nietzel; once the state legislative session begins in January, he says he's in Jefferson City at least once a week, advocating for funding and other issues important to the school. Add that to a laundry list of conferences and alumni events and Nietzel is out of town several times a week, which he says can become frustrating.

"You get to the point where you worry you can't keep up with things here," he says. "Generally, what happens is you take your time out of the weekend to get it done."

After the scheduling meeting, Nietzel prepares for his monthly radio call-in show, "Studio Live," at KSMU-FM. This month's topic is the economy, with two guests: Greg Williams, senior vice president of Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, and MSU economics department chairman Ardeshir Dalal. The group, which also includes KSMU senior news producer Jennifer Moore, talks before the show about the the Dow Jones' morning troubles. "Last I saw, it was down 315 points," Nietzel notes.

After the show and lunch, Nietzel heads over to JQH Arena for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. "The Q" is Nietzel's pet project; he's on site every day, more than once on most days, to check progress.

Today's festivities are the culmination of more than two years of planning and work, and while addressing the crowd of more than 100, he points out the aid of university donors - specifically John Q. Hammons - as essential to the $67 million project getting off the ground.

Donors are a big part of Nietzel's daily life; he estimates about 40 percent of his time revolves around donors, either in attending an event or communicating in person, via phone or in writing.

"It's not about asking for money," he says. "It's finding out what it is about the university that they're most interested in, and then making sure that if they have invested with us, they feel good about how we're taking care of that investment."

After the ribbon cutting, Nietzel rounds out his day with an evening volleyball game - MSU vs. Drake University at Hammons Student Center, the arena JQH will replace as the home of men's and women's basketball. Nietzel attends numerous athletic events, including nearly every home football game and basketball game, both men and women.

"A lot of people identify with the institution through athletics, and a lot of people - like me - admire the skill represented by the student athletes," he says, noting that he also attends concerts, plays and Tent Theater productions for the same reasons. Athletics are one of his passions, a nod to his former employer, the University of Kentucky, and his lifelong love of competition.

And once the match, a straight-set MSU victory, is over, he heads home - undoubtedly to prepare for the next week.

The Q&A

Q: You came to Missouri State in July 2005 from University of Kentucky, where you served as provost. Compare the two universities and Springfield versus Lexington, Ky.

A: The two communities are very similar - they're similar in size, in the prominence of the university in that community, similar in how they fit in the state overall in terms of municipal areas. I'd say Missouri State has a stronger tradition of putting teaching as its main mission, with research and scholarship as complementary. At UK it was probably reversed. I think the relationship between the university and the city, over the years, has been tended to here more carefully - it wasn't a bad relationship there, but the university and the city work well together here to solve problems.

Q: You started at Missouri State just before its name changed from Southwest Missouri State. Do you think people view the school differently now?

A: The farther you get from Springfield, the larger the effect of the name change. People here in Springfield have known the university and seen an evolution. The farther you are, the less you know about it, and therefore the more the label can influence your standing. So as far as our ability to recruit faculty, our presence internationally, it's had a significant positive effect. It's also had a positive effect recruiting students from outside southwest Missouri, so we've been able, even in some pretty tough times, to sustain enrollment growth these past three years.

Q: The university has had several well-publicized controversies in recent years, including a First Amendment lawsuit by former social work student Emily Brooker and a subsequent examination of the department. How would you assess the way the school has handled controversy?

A: I think we've tried to be very open when we've had a problem, in disclosing it and telling how we plan to deal with it. Let's take the social work department as an example. We resolved the lawsuit very quickly, because we felt that mistakes had been made there that we wanted to address. But there was no requirement for us to do external review of the social work program. There was no requirement for us to bring in a second team to evaluate it. And we made the results of (the evaluation) completely public. I think when we've had something where we're not doing a good job, we've tried to be honest about the problem and addressing it.

Q: You aim to respond within 24 hours to the roughly 100 e-mails you receive each day. Is e-mail your preferred method of communication?

A: No - in person is best, followed by phone and then e-mail. I prefer the most direct form of communication possible.

Q: What are your spare-time hobbies?

A: I do like to play golf (Nietzel is a member of Hickory Hills Country Club), and I like music, particularly jazz. Reading is a pastime - I usually am reading a couple of books at a time and like that to be the last thing I do at the end of the day. And I'm a little bit of a cable news junkie - I like to watch (CNN and CNBC mostly).

Q: What books are you reading right now?

A: "Hot, Flat and Crowded" by Thomas Friedman - it's his follow-up to "The World is Flat." It focuses on climate and energy issues, and the threat and challenges posed by them. It's a typical Friedman book - I think he's quite interesting to read. I also just finished a crime novel based in New York City by Richard Price - "Lush Life."