Dr. Paul D. Plotkowski spoke about how he grew his college of engineering and computing at Grand Valley State University and how he aims to use these skills at Southeast Missouri State University at an open forum Wednesday, Feb. 18.

Plotkowski spoke in the University Center Ballroom A to a crowd of around 100, and is one of the four finalists for the Southeast's presidential position.

He started off the forum talking about his personal history and his thoughts on the role of a president before taking questions from the audience.

"I put myself through school working at a couple different automotive facilities," Plotkowski said. "When you grow up in Detroit, that's kind of what you do. ... Started my career at what was then called GMI Engineering and Management Institute. Today it is called Kettering University. It's a technical institute that focuses on engineering, as you would gather. Started there in a faculty role, made the mistake of letting them figure out that I also knew how to do things like scheduling people and balancing books, and they sucked me into the dark side doing administrative work."

Plotkowski then went on to be the director of their manufacturing systems engineering program along with leading the institute's accreditation efforts. He blames having four different jobs, with four different bosses, as one of the major reasons he left to work at Grand Valley State University, where there was a unifying vision.

At Grand Valley, Plotkowski started as the director of a newly-developed engineering program with about 130 students and grew the program into the Padnos College of Engineering and Computing with an current enrollment of more than 2,000 students.

"We are very happy with what we do," Plotkowski said. "If I could triple my number of graduates, my employers would still not be satisfied. They like the graduates, the graduates like coming to us and what they've experienced. And I'm thinking that we've kind of gotten to the point where I actually finally did the job that I was told to do, and maybe it's time for another challenge, another opportunity."

Plotkowski said that a president's role requires building relationships with the students, staff, faculty and the community to create a shared vision.

"In today's world, we can't be looking to the state to provide all the funding to do everything we need to do," Plotkowski said. "We can't operate a university in isolation from the community. We need to know what's needed of our graduates, we need to know how we can contribute and we need to engage our students in the community to enrich the community, but also to enrich the students."

One of the things that Plotkowski expanded on in his current job is that all students in his department have experiential work experience for a semester or a year in partnership with local businesses and also do outreach in local elementary and middle schools.

Plotkowski said that open communication is key to having a university meet it's needs and grow and that environment of transparency has to start with the president's office. He added that the president has to be the advocate of the university.

"If the president isn't the number one cheerleader for a university, somethings wrong," Plotkowski said. "I am probably not the smartest person in this room, but I would dare to bet that I'm one of the hardest-working."

Plotkowski added that at a certain point, you can't just work more or harder. He said that universities have to look for opportunities to "work smart" through using technology or reengineering systems. Examples he gave was creating better online systems to avoid rekeying information or having course evaluations done online so workers don't have to type up the feedback.

Plotkowski added that he sees the philosophy of athletics at universities to be to have student athletes, not athletes affiliated with the university.

"In that manner, you help people continue to grow and develop, and you build community in the university and engagement and it's all good" Plotkowski said. "It's when athletics becomes athletics for the sake of athletics that universities start getting in trouble."

When asked what he would first try to do as Southeast president, Plotkowski replied that at this point he mostly only knows about the good things. He pointed out there was no snow on the Southeast website.

"It's hard to know where the challenges are," Plotkowski said. "The one thing that is absolutely clear is the need for increased revenues. Increased support for the university without increasing the burden on the students. That's number one."

Plotkowski pointed out that while enrollment has gradually increased, the number of faculty and staff has stayed constant or slightly decreased. He hopes to add additional support and keep people having positive feelings about the university as they financially move in the other direction.

Read more about the presidential search at southeastArrow.com/PresidentialSearch.