MSUM President Anne Blackhurst and her successor, Dr. Tim Downs. (Photos/Nancy Hanson.)
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
The Center for the Arts was packed with faculty and students Friday – gathered to meet and greet the man who will be inaugurated this summer as the 12th president of Minnesota State University Moorhead.
Dr. Anne Blackhurst, who has headed the university since 2014, introduced the new head of the 138-year-old institution, Dr. Timothy Downs.
Downs, who currently serves as interim chief of staff at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt in Arcata, California, was president of Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, from 2016 to 2021. He will take on his new duties at MSUM on July 1 following Blackhurst’s retirement. He earned his bachelor’s degree from California State University in Sacramento; his master’s in communication studies from West Virginia University; and his doctorate in organizational communications from the University of Oklahoma.
He told the assembled campus community, “I could feel the warmth here from my first Zoom interview. The strong sense of family, the campus’s culture, is palpable. Here we support and encourage one another.” Promising to spend the next three months doing a “mind meld” with the retiring president, he said he felt an immediate connection with the campus’s core values of grit, humility and heart.
“Grit – that made me smile,” he said. “When I made my first visit to campus – during a blizzard – I immediately came to understand that it’s a true part of Moorhead.”
He introduced his wife Mary, a native of Hawaii who, he said, has adapted well to the rigors of the North. “When we lived in Buffalo, she was the only woman in town who could run a snowblower,” he quipped.
Downs was selected from a field of five finalists by the board of trustees of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Chancellor Devinder Malhotra told the gathered campus community that the soon-to-be president brings considerable expertise and keen insights into the changing nature of higher education. “He is a great communicator and a person who is strongly committed to being an ardent supporter of students and the innate missions of a regional comprehensive university anchored in liberal arts and sciences. Without a doubt, he is the right leader at this point in the university’s history.”
As president at Northern State, Downs became known for encouraging transformational change and positioning the campus to meet future demands and needs, as well as stabilizing undergraduate enrollment, increasing the number of graduate students and boosting student retention. Under his leadership, the school developed 20 new academic programs and partnerships, including a graduate program in special education already receiving national recognition. He designed and led a capital campaign that ultimately raised over $62 million, as well as $5 million in additional endowed scholarship funds. In total, NSU received more than $110 million in gifts during his five-year tenure.
His resume also includes previous stints as provost and chief academic officer at Niagara (New York) University from 2011 to 2016, and Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, from 2002 to 2011.
He told the staff and students, “I’m looking forward to continuing the great success story that is MSUM. Mary and I couldn’t be happier to have this be the next page of our lives. Go, Dragons!”
