Tim Downs carries early lessons to MSUM president’s office

Dr. Tim Downs learned his most important lesson about success directly from the winningest coach in National Football League history.

He was just 11 at the time, living in Baltimore with his parents and three older brothers. One of young Tim’s friends from an adjacent neighborhood was David, whose father coached in the NFL. They had a tremendous season with David at quarterback and Tim at tight end, but a questionable call in the championship game cost them the league title.

A few days later, near the close of the end-of-season party at the home of David’s parents, Don and Dorothy Shula, the fifth-grade boys gathered in the living room and Coach Shula queued up another game lost on a dubious call – the 1965 Western Conference championship between his Baltimore Colts and the Green Bay Packers.

The reels rolled, projecting a game clock winding below two minutes in the 4th quarter of the hard-played, low-scoring contest, and with Green Bay setting up for a field goal attempt to tie the game at 10. The kick was up and, as one media outlet described it, “A Don Chandler field goal attempt to tie the game in the final two minutes sailed wide to the right... But the referee standing under the uprights called the field goal good.” Another field goal in overtime gave the Packers a 13-10 victory and a trip to the (pre-Super Bowl era) NFL National Championship.

Downs recalls the moment vividly.

“He turns the lights back on and says, ‘So, men, what did you learn from that?’”

Murmurs around the circle of boys.

“‘You know what I did the next day?’ Shula asked. ‘I got up and I went to work, because that’s what happens in life. You will fail. You will lose. But if you’re going to succeed, you need to get up and go back to work.’”

The wisdom stuck, and MSUM’s new president has carried it through positions at 10 universities over the course of a 40-year student, teaching and administrative career.

Grit, Humility, Heart

But if you want to talk grit – one of MSUM’s three core values – you need to go back even further. Downs’ life lessons in perseverance came well before he played with the son of one of the NFL’s greatest coaches, and in different, more formidable forms.

Born asthmatic, dyslexic and with strabismus, Downs endured two eye surgeries before starting elementary school. Those early years were tough – he had to repeat first grade, for example – but with time and commitment to eye exercises, he was doing much better when fourth grade rolled around.

Downs calls himself a survivor and fierce competitor who “didn’t have a very good start out of the blocks.”

“It challenged me to challenge myself to be a better learner,” he said. “That’s when I was ignited by the excitement of learning and its rewards.”

Even so, Downs hadn’t planned on a career in academia when he enrolled at California State University, Sacramento. In fact, he was working for Bank of America to put himself through school and doing so well that his managers signed him up for the company’s management training program. But as he got close to completing his bachelor’s degree in communication studies and telecommunications, his advisor talked him into going further. He landed at West Virginia University, Morgantown, where he earned his master’s while teaching communication studies to undergrads. He went on to earn his doctorate in organizational communications from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, then joined the faculty at California State University, Los Angeles.

Before he was even tenured, he told his future wife, Mary, that someday he wanted to be a college president.

Tim and Mary Downs

“She looked at me like, ‘Oh really?’” he recalls with a chuckle.

But she believed him, and believed in him, so it was no surprise when, in 2016, after serving in positions with progressively more responsibility at universities across the country, Northern State University, Aberdeen, S.D., appointed Downs as its president. Now, two years after leaving Northern for Cal Poly Humboldt (Calif.), he has the honor of becoming MSU Moorhead’s 12th president.

It’s a fitting place for the great-grandson of an immigrant who escaped the potato famine in Ireland and, after settling in what is now Kansas, made sure each of his seven children completed high school. It was a remarkable dedication to education at a time when many kids were expected to leave school early to work on the farm or help at home. One of those seven kids, Downs’ grandfather, went even further, obtaining a teaching certification, becoming a banker and earning his law degree. While he never taught officially, he instructed immigrants enrolled in night school.

“Education has always been valued in our family,” Downs said. “It’s a tradition.”

And one tradition has brought Downs to another: Dragon pride.

Purposeful Success

MSUM’s new president perches on the front edge of one the low chairs in his Owens Hall office, much like an exuberant fifth grader anxious to learn from a legendary coach, but this time Downs is the one telling the story.

More than 1,400 kids visited MSUM’s campus as part of Tri-College University’s (TCU) Walk Into My Future event, inspiring students to pursue higher education. President Downs and TCU Provost Tim Flakoll visit with children.

“One of the things I really like about MSUM is the “premise of humility,” Downs says while adjusting new glasses that have Dragon-red temples and tips. “This is a place that recognizes we should have humility, and that means it’s a place where people are going to have respect for each other and what we know. That’s big, because I really believe in the collectiveness of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it purposefully.”

On a local radio show during his first weeks at MSUM, Downs likened the experience of taking on a university president’s job to parachuting onto a campus. The direction isn’t yet set, but the new leader has to hit the ground running, talk to lots of people and build the vision forward from there.

“You just start asking questions,” he said. “It’s constant communication with students, staff, faculty and community members to frame the institution, talking about what we do, why we do it, what the outcomes are and how we’re strong community partners.”

He’s already prepared to start sharing several institutional themes with potential partners and stakeholder groups.

The first concerns the quality of the MSUM experience and the collective approach to making it so.

“Every student is a case study,” he said. “Are they growing? Are they developing? Are they maturing? Will they be ready to launch into the job market and the community? And when they get there, will they be ready to give back to that community? Across the institution, we have to be looking at their experience and working together to position each one for success.”

Another is the institution’s economic impacts for the city and state. According to the latest assessment by Erie, Pa.-based consulting firm Parker Philips, MSUM generates $244.7 million annually.

President Downs talked about his first few weeks on the job during a WDAY radio interview with Tom Tucker.

“That’s a pretty big number, so you’re going to hear me say it a lot,” Downs said. “But it’s not just to say, ‘Hey, look at us!’ but to reinforce how MSUM is one of the benchmarks in the community and that we’re ready to continue collaborating to improve the economic viability of Moorhead and the entire region.”

Part of that, he says, is accepting there will be ups and downs. Some initiatives will work, others won’t, some will get MSUM closer to its vision, others will fall short. Regardless of the day-to-day outcomes, though, there’s one thing the MSUM and Moorhead communities can be sure of – the next day, President Tim Downs will get up and get back to work, with Dragon Pride!