#1 Getting to know Metro State and its resources.

We are excited to introduce a new series as part of the Metroscope: Coffee Talk, with a new addition to the Metropolitan, Tom Coffee. Tom will invite various guests of Metro State University to share a coffee with him as he asks them about their unique experiences while highlighting their life stories.

In this introductory episode, we are joined by Phil Fuehrer, the director of Student Life & Leadership Development at Metro State. Phil shares his professional journey and offers some advice as to how students can become more involved on campus. We also discuss plans for Coffee Talk and as well as other happenings with the Metropolitan.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome to the podcast. This is the Metroscope. I am your fearless producer, Luke Bodwins, and I would like to introduce our special new podcast host, Tom Coffey. And we have a brand new segment, and Tom will be heading his own series. Tom, please introduce yourself and your series and your hopes and dreams for your project. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Thank you, Luke. My name's Tom Coffey, and this new podcast is going to be Coffee Talk. And we'll be talking about resources for students, things that you might want to know, um, what's out there, what can help you with your journey at Metro State. And we'll be getting into some more political interesting topics down the road, too. But for today, we've got Phil Fuhrer. He is the director of student life here at Metro State. How are you doing, Phil?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I'm doing well, and I'm pleased to be here. Pleased to be in the on the inaugural episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah, it's the very first one. So um, yeah, let's get right into it. You're the director. What brought you to being a director? What's your what was the passion, the drive to be the director of student life leadership?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

My my glib answer is that I needed a job. Okay. But when I got here is really when I found out found the passion for it. Um, I mean, the the truth is I I was job hunting. Uh this was back in the day. I've been here uh 25 and a half years. So this was back when um a lot of the job hunting was still done via newspaper.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Uh you know Metropolitan, uh, you know, it's I think it's apropos for the Metropolitan Newspaper, right? Yeah. Uh but this was paper copies and uh looking for a job. I was able to be hired as the office manager here at Metro in the student life department. And I've worked my way up uh to assistant director, and now uh now I'm director. That's awesome. Yeah, and and the passion that came was being here, the variety of activities that that you get to do uh with this job, but you the variety of activities that you see at at the university that are being put on by student organizations, by departments um that we put on, uh, and and the the variety of personalities that come through. You know, the student personalities that come through. You get to you get to meet a lot of students, they're here for two or three or four years. Uh you develop uh uh uh a collegial uh relationship with them, and uh it's a that bittersweet graduation moment, right? You know, there's somebody's here for two or three or four years, they graduate, you're you're sort of sad to see them go, but but a new batch uh is is always churning on through.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah, and we still get to be alums. We still get to be associated with Metro State as we go off on our career journeys and life journeys beyond Metro State. Um, I think it's you know it it's a great place to be. There are a ton of resources, and it's not always easy to know, hey, what's going on out there. So pretend I'm a new student or current student at Metro State University. What are some of the uh organizations that I can get involved with or events that are going on?

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Well, one of your best bets is to get on to uh engage. Okay. Uh that's the system that we use right now. It's sort of a an I call it a a gated internal Facebook kind of kind of system.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Uh it's all the student organizations on campus. It is uh several departments are on campus as well, and that's where the bulk of the outside the classroom, what's called co-curricular activities, occurs at the university. So student organizations putting things on, student life putting things on, departments putting them on, uh, and a great resource for students to go to. And it's engage.metrostate.edu. So E N-G-A-G-E.metrostate.edu. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

So get on that or get on the Metro State website, look for engage. There's many ways to do it. Just yeah, engage.metrostate.edu.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

You can go to the homepage. I always scroll all the way to the bottom. There are quick links for students. One of them is engage.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Which is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

I had no idea that existed, and I've been a Metro State student now for over a year. I I didn't know that exist.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

It it you do, uh everybody's got a free account. Uh so it's a little like I said, it's a little like Facebook. You've got it, you got an account. Um, you do have to log in, uh, but once you do log in the first time, you'll do a uh a computer usage policy page. It'll recognize with single sign-on. So use your star ID and your password, and from that point forward it should recognize you. But you do have to take the initiative to do that. Um, is ePortfolio still a thing? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

I haven't heard that in a couple of years. So I was a century college student, and ePortfolio was like uh LinkedIn before LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Oh yeah, yeah. Um, maybe it's been more like a decade since I've heard that.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Yeah. Well, I'm dating myself. That was back in 2010. Okay. And it was like you an electronic portfolio, and then you had a link. It was like your own personal website. Um, and I just remember I created one, never went back to it. And you list your academic accomplishments, and it's all right there. It was basically the precursor to LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Uh in engage is really much more of a an event kind of group management kind of system. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

So, Phil, can you tell us about some of the events going on or specific groups I might get involved with?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Well, as we record this, it is uh we're in the the middle of summer. Yeah. Uh so things do tend to slow down a little bit. Um, a couple of things that I would always recommend take a look at the library, library and information systems uh learning center. Uh the library is always running stuff, including over the summer.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And our yoga club is relatively new, and they are running uh a series of yoga club meetings and and yoga sessions. Okay. So those are the two uh two big ones um going on over the summer. Uh, some of the big ones I think that are sort of annual things that occur. Fallfest, that's our version of homecoming.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

And Springfest, which is a spring version, a little pulled back a little bit from Fall Fest. Fall Fest is the big the big event of the year, and then Springfest is out there as well. Those are two events that I'd recommend folks pay attention to. This year's Springfest is going to be on Saturday, September 26th.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Okay. Good to know. Um, we've also been talking in the office about various other groups in here. Luke, you've mentioned that there is a DD uh group out there. What's that about?

SPEAKER_02 6:46

There is a lot of student groups. Dungeons and Dragons. Um, Phil educated me that they don't just do Dungeons and Dragons.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Comics anime. It's it's Kagami is the the acronym. So comics anime, G stands for something, uh, the rest of it stands for something as well. But comics and anime and games, that's the G. G is games, okay, and then and then whatever else it stands for. So but they do play, in my understanding, is a fairly uh fairly mean game of DD.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

I will let's look into that because it'd be fun to have a sample uh game.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Um, and then just as uh we at the Metropolitan are organizing this up, a video podcast, which we're in the process of doing.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Oh, that's right. That's gonna be really cool.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Tom will be the host. Um what? I will make some appearances too. I guess I'll be a host as well. Um, but that'll be a fun segment. Um, but you're right. Um, and so a little about me, I went to the University of Minnesota and there's a plethora of groups, but I think Metro State, the the groups are a little bit more intimate. Um we have the Metropolitan, of course, a newspaper. There's also the hot dish. Oh, we have which if you're an artist and you write poetry or um you want to submit anything uh artistic, photography, photography, um, short stories, nonfiction. Um, that is a very good uh thing to look into as well. If you're a Metro State student and you want to get some of your poetry or photography published, that's a good avenue to pursue.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Um it's also a good avenue if you want to want to have uh a reading uh of some of that or a display of some of that. Uh Hot Dish tends to put on one or two readings per year. So poetry, short stories, uh heavy on the spoken, unspoken uh word. But uh where did the readings happen? Uh they do a variety of places. They've done the Loft Literary Center off Washington Avenue in Minneapolis. Oh they have done that in the past.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

That's a very good place.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Uh they've also done our fireplace lounge here in the student center down on the first floor.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

That'd be a really cool spot for yeah. I would love that. That sounds like a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, those are uh the the couple of places that I've been to. Um but they do it at least once a year, sometimes twice.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Very cool. So I just wanted to throw in like you're probably picking up on this, but as a student, life can get can get pretty crazy. We all have our own lives. Um, a lot of Metro State students work full-time. Oh wow. Um it can be really difficult to get engaged with campus life and student life. Um, I used to be under the assumption that you know you go to classes and you leave, you don't hang around campus. Um, but like even us speaking, like speaking with Phil, there's a lot of resources that I don't know of as a student. And but there's a million and one ways to get engaged. Um so it's really nice to hear that uh they honor students by having uh events like Spring Fest and Fall Fest. Um but I just want to throw that out there. So it's my experience as a student's kind of difficult. So that's what's nice about student uh life and leadership development is that you can you can find out what organizations are there.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Well, Luke, yours is a is a common experience, right? We're we're a fully commuter campus, so you know we don't have res halls. Um we are uh uh uh an older student age population overall, uh 29, 29 and a half is the average age. Uh and that lends itself to working adults.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

The genesis of the university was allowing working adults to come back, get their degree. Good stuff. And yeah. Um, but that's that that also then lends itself to having a little more uh difficulty or a little more, you gotta be a little more strategic in in putting on programming that students want to attend, want to stay on campus after class, or come back to campus if they've already gone home. Right. Yeah. Uh but there's plenty out there, whether it's the student organizations doing it, student life office, uh, a variety of departments putting on activities. And it's always a constant push as well, or not push, but a constant um strategy that we try to use with clubs, with the departments to put different programming on at different times. Yeah. So there's some there's some Saturday programming, there's evening programming, there's daytime programming. And that's just the the hope that that can mesh with students' schedules. Oh yeah. So they can attend.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah, we've all got I like to say life happens.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Life happens, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

We have our various things that you know we need to do and we need to take care of. I'm really curious about something. So this summer I'm taking a class. It's 100% online, asynchronous. For those students that are taking classes online, what how can they engage with the campus, even though they're not physically here?

SPEAKER_01 11:52

You know, if there was anything good about COVID, it was that it changed uh pretty much all of us from maybe having heard of Zoom or heard of Skype, or maybe maybe we did some Skyping. Um, I know prior to COVID I had heard of Zoom, uh, you know, WebEx, you know, I didn't want or two, but it it uh got us into the 21st century with video uh you know hybrid types of uh activities, and that has largely continued. Now, not every program is hybrid, not every program is online, but there is still a lot of programming that is being done by student orgs, by departments that is at at worst, I guess you could say, hybrid. So there might be that in-person component. And frankly, I think there's a value in in-person in getting together and and and meeting people and seeing them face to face and body language and things like that. But on the convenience side of the house, if you can log into a Zoom uh and and and have it recorded, even so we've done recordings of things as well. Okay. Uh those are so that's uh that that's the option I think and the offerings that students can attend.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Very cool. Yeah.

unknown 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Um yeah, so there's a lot of different things going on. I highly encourage any students, anybody out there, um, get involved with more than just the classes. We all have things that we can do beyond just classes. Uh make some friends, make some networking, you know, maybe hopefully find some people and get a job after you're done with your education. Luke, do you have anything else?

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Um Yeah, I just want to say that as a as a you made a perfectly uh valid point that for me, like being on campus is I get more being on campus. And even if you have online, completely on online classes, even coming to campus and just joining online, I would I would do that. I have an online class right now and I come to campus just to physically be here to sign on. It might defeat the purpose of having an online class, it's convenient, but I mean you never knew who you were gonna meet. Um how I got involved with the Metropolitan is just by seeking out ways to get engaged more with the campus, uh meeting Phil. Um and then um Tom, like excuse me, like Tom is a graduate student, so he's being modest. Um Tom is a graduate student here at Maple. Um I mean not Maple, sorry, Metro State. I'm in the Maple program, I talk a lot about it. Um but Tom, please tell us and our listeners more about you. Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

So I'm kind of a weird cat. I've done a lot of stuff over the over the years. My undergraduate, uh, when I finally picked a major, I said, Oh, I'm gonna go be a high school history teacher. So I did a degree in secondary ed, and I decided to expand that out and also do another degree in history. And I had a professor who said, Oh, it'd be great if you could teach more than one subject. So I did a minor in computer science. And when I graduated, I said, Oh, yeah, I'll go keep doing computer science-y stuff. I'll be a web developer or app developer for some years, and then I'll go teach. Well, five years became 10 years, became even more. And over the years, um, you know, I've done a little bit with education. Right now, I'm uh a substitute teacher with Minneapolis uh public schools. But um, yeah, so I'm doing a master's in computer science. And yeah, I I really like Metro State. I mean, one thing that that definitely attracted me was the cost per hour. It's such an affordable school to go to. And uh I've really liked it. I mean, yeah, there's there's so many resources on campus. I've been so happy to go and study at the library, study at the student center. I another thing that I do is meditate. And in the second floor of the student center, there's a really nice meditation and uh prayer room for students that want to use it for their yeah. And the fitness center is really nice. There's just tons of things going on on campus. And I just, you know, like to wander around and see what I can get involved with, and there's lots of stuff going on day to day on campus. So uh yeah, again, I I highly encourage folks to come down and get involved with Metro State.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Let me throw in before we we conclude uh a couple of thoughts that I had while both of you were speaking. Uh cost per, you know, the credit hour that you talked about. Yeah, students are paying a four dollar per credit activity fee. Oh, yeah, yeah. Take advantage of it. Yeah. Uh Luke, I think you talked about um learning things in the classroom. Uh that that is that that theory, I like to say. That's learning theory. If you want to put theory to practice, that's co-curricular outside the classroom activities. Yeah. Uh whether that's personal and professional development, leadership development, uh, other educational opportunities, you know, seminars or workshops that get put on. There's a lot that gets offered. And the resources that are available to students range from uh a food pantry that's open to anybody to use. That's downstairs on the first floor of the student center here. The fitness room up on the second floor, you're paying for it. Um, that's actually out of your student center fee. Uh, if you take a look, you'll see a fee for that as well. Take advantage of it. Um, study rooms. You know, Luke, you talked about coming on campus and maybe defeating the purpose. You know, not everybody has fantastic internet connection. And I've I've known students that are taking online courses that come on that come on campus because their their internet's not great at home.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Uh and they don't want to go to McDonald's, right? Right. That's a that's an old uh rural joke, I guess, that you know, you've got to gotta go to McDonald's to do your homework. Um so but they they come on campus, um, sort of a similar thing. But there's other uh resources that Tom that you talked about that are available too, whether it's mental health counseling over at the at the counseling center, the career center, and and job development and oh yeah, resume building and and and what have you there. Um the multicultural American Indian Retention Services puts on a ton of cultural programming, lots of resources available for students. I recommend taking advantage of it.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah, that's all awesome, awesome stuff. Thanks, Phil.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Um, yeah, and I I echo that. And I will say just to put in a thing for the counseling services, that is an uh service available to you, and I highly recommend um taking advantage of it and the career services as well. Um people here at what I love about Metro State is people are here to invest in your development, not just as a student, but as a functioning member of society. I hate saying that term, but I mean they really prepare you for the world. I mean, I think everyone that I've spoken with, including you, Phil, take a it seems like they take a personal interest in um making sure that we as students have what we need. Um, even if you, you know, you're looking for a job, like you want to get your resume checked over, do it. I mean, they they're there to help you. And I will I will put a plug-in for the library.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

I think the library is underutilized, and they have fully staffed researchers there available.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

And they will help you research. And that's that's something that still blows my mind that there's someone that will help you do your research for you. Um I've utilized that service uh when I was doing a policy research project, and it really is convenient. So you don't even have to go to the library, you can message them, or you can go to a library page and uh like initiate a chat, I think if I'm remembering.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

I think they do have online chat, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

So you can just simply say, Hey, I need help looking for this particular bill or researching uh the history of this law, like when it was a bill, when it passed through session, something like that. That was my personal experience. Um, so I will put the plug in.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

And a ton of that database uh I think it's a hundred plus database um resources that are available for students to use.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Yeah, and if you're looking, like use the library people. Oh, yeah. And even any public library, use a library because I've spent hours looking for resources to use this for citations and uh the librarians are there to help you, or the people, the researchers work in the library are there to help you. Um, but Tom, I'm gonna turn it over to you because this is your segment. Um please tell us what um so we covered the the raw basis, but um please tell us what you have planned in the future if you have any planned episodes or the overall trajectory of focusing on, or what you want your show to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Sure. Well, I'd like to focus on general resources that students adjacent folks can utilize here on campus. The the library folks, um yeah, they're they're great people. Um love to get them on and interview them. Counseling services is also near and dear to my heart. Um, I'd love to get those folks on too and interview them. And something further down the road, I've been really passionate about. We all have had our lives kind of up-ended here in Minnesota um with Metro Surge, and it's definitely taken a toll on Metro State and folks here directly, and our family members, our friends, and I would love to hear more from students about how Metro Surge has has impacted us here. Um personally, just an aside, I've got a friend of mine from a previous job. Uh, his brother-in-law was picked up by Metro Surge, and he's an American citizen. He never should have got picked up in the first place. There's a GoFundMe running for him. That's a whole nother thing. But something for the future that uh I'd really like to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Well, thank you. Um, thank you, Tom. Thank you, Phil. Um signing out. Uh, this has been the Metroscope, and again, this is Coffee Talk with Tom Coffee. Yeah, um, you will not hear me as much because this is Tom's baby, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with it, Tom.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah, thanks very much, Luke. Thanks very much, Phil. Thanks for listening to Coffee Talk. Have a good one, everybody. Bye bye.