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ABOVE, BEYOND AND SIDEWAYS
ABOVE AND BEYOND
Being a Maverick involves pursuing one’s ideas and dreams relentlessly and passionately. Whether in their careers, classrooms or across the world, Mavericks—and those who support them—know that excellence is just the beginning. Here are a few examples of that spirit.
The Discipline of Letting Go
Philosophy professor Craig Matarrese applies his work to music and film
By Joe Tougas ‘86
Whether philosophy or music came first in his life, he’s not sure. But Craig Matarrese knows he was 12 when he started picking up the bass guitar and wondering about life. Both the pondering and the playing have served Matarrese well. The longtime philosophy professor at Minnesota State Mankato has, for the past 10 years or so, also taught bass guitar in the University’s music department. Outside he plays in a number of ensembles, preferring music that—not surprisingly—is open-ended, exploratory and improvisational. In Matarresse’s view, it’s not a long walk from philosophy to improvising on the fretless bass. “There’s a real tendency to put theory first, and be like ‘Here are the modes and the major scales, and these are the chords and these are the intervals and once I figure that all out and it’s all conceptually clear, then I shall improvise,’” Matarrese said. “And that’s just so backwards and so wrong.” Same goes, he added, with philosophy which, in a similar vein “has a long history of being overly intellectualistic about things and missing what’s really going on.” Matarrese recently crossed more borders with the 2022 documentary “Rez Metal,” which he co-produced and provided a musical score. The film follows members of a heavy metal music community in Navajo Nation. It’s his second collaboration with the film’s other producer and director, Ashkan Soltani Stone, who taught English at the University for four years. Filmed prior to the COVID pandemic, the film on one hand chronicles a young band attempting to emerge from the small musical scene and into some sort of prominence with the guidance of an engineer who worked with Metallica. On another level, it’s a jarring look at the backdrop to their ambition: Poverty, alcoholism and the ongoing problem of teen suicide.
“At first we thought ‘We’re not making a film about how difficult the rez is. We’re not making a film about poverty and drug abuse, suicide and alcoholism and violence and all this,’” Matarrese said. “We wanted to make a rock ‘n’ roll story, a story about a band, a story about a scene. We went in just University philosophy thinking we could slip past issues like that. professor and music “But we soon found out it’s impossible, and it ends up being instructor Craig Matarrese kind of irresponsible to try to get around it. It’s devastating and it’s a backdrop that everybody knows and never really goes away.” Initially, the two approached the film like an improvised piece of music—no preconceived narrative arc, despite a juicy development for one of the bands when they scored a chance to work with Metallica’s engineer. “Our approach is pretty guerilla style, you put yourself in a situation and you just go where things go. It’s hard to maintain a plan. You know, it’s very inefficient. But sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get a whole film out of that.” “Rez Metal” allows Matarrese—through the young subjects in the film—to show a sort of pondering-in-action that zeros in on the core of what can get beaten to death in conference presentations and research publications. “They’re teenagers and they’re in metal bands and so they’re kind of partying and running around and being crazy,” he said. “These are people in a situation thinking about who they are and what they’re going to do with their lives and how to deal. But they’re not doing it in a vacuum, they’re doing it with their compatriots. And they’re in a band, and the band has an identity. And the question of what is this band and what is the music we’re making and what do we believe in and what do we reject? “And you have other bands you interact with and how do they see themselves? And how do you see yourselves as part of a scene. And what is this really all about? And that’s reflection, and we shouldn’t ask for more from reflection than that. We don’t need philosophers standing around giving us the cleaned-up, conceptual version of it.” The film is scheduled for airing on PBS, and can be seen on the Tubi channel.
Mataresse served as co-producer and music supervisor for “Rez Metal,” a new documentary.
When Support Goes Above
In three areas of University life—its marching band, athletics and the community radio station KMSU—the people making extraordinary moves and elevating life at the University are the fans.
By Joe Tougas ‘86
Go Team
For years, the response to letter-writing fundraising campaigns by student athletes went fine. But when Senior Associate Athletics Director Greg Weis and Director of Community Engagement Scott Nelson took a novel approach to Maverick Week in April 2022, the response of Maverick sports fans was seismic by comparison. With the average gift coming in at less than $100, Maverick sports fans showed up to donate in excess of $100,000 for the week-long drive. The goal had been half of that. The innovative approach involved getting word of mouth going early on social media, and then providing some novel content: An athlete from each team recorded a short, 15-second video giving a heads-up about Maverick Week and encouraging contributions. Teammates shared the videos on their social media channels. Coaches did the same thing, creating short pitches aimed at alumni from their programs. In all, an estimated 16,000 people saw the videos before the fundraising began. “We put more time and effort into the ramp-up than we ever had before,” said Weis. On the tech side, Jennifer Moore, Director of Annual Giving, installed the crowdfunding capabilities for seamless, easy contributions. Once the campaign launched, contributions started rolling in at just under $15,000 a day, surprising Nelson as he kept an intense if not excited eye on the numbers. Even with the prep, he had a nagging fear it would be a bust, that the effort would earn a nickname of “Maverick Weak.” But as the contributions came in, he found himself elated at what was happening and still remembers the excitement of seeing the funds top $100,000. The total of $104,000 went to athletic scholarships across all 20 University teams. And the winning strategy is one they’ll use again for the 2023 Maverick Week. “I’ve already laid out this year’s schedule,” Nelson said of the video shoots, scripts and directions. “It’s ready to go.”
Thursby conducting the band in Boston during the Frozen Four tournament in April. The players’ enthusiasm for the band is mirrored by the fans who contribute to it. Big Noise for a Big Band
The astonishing surge in giving that has come to the University’s marching band, The Maverick Machine, is in line with the members’ dedication and energy, director Michael Thursby said. In most of his 10 years helming the band, fundraisers have been used to help supplement the program with T-shirts and small items. But for the past three years, through crowdfunding, things have taken off to help fund international travel, new uniforms and scholarships for returning members. Thursby is grateful in talking about the fans and gets emotional talking about his band. “They move in the week before classes start, they learn and they’re rehearsing 9 to 5 that week. They’re at almost every athletic event—they love every sport we get to play for—and they’re not paid. They’re not getting a ton of extra stuff from the University for their time commitment, but it’s because they love the University,” he said of the dozens of Maverick Machine members. “And I think on the fundraising side, people see that. People outside the University recognize the investments that the students are making and they’re willing to invest in them.” As was the case with Athletics, leaning into social media seemed to be the key to getting word out and giving fans a way to show the love. A real game-changer happened during the pandemic’s lockdown, when life was a long, slow dirge compared to the crowds, the games and the school spirit. Yet individual members of the band filmed themselves playing their parts of the University’s “Rouser” and a video was created of the collective and a full-blast anthem was shared online. “That’s when we saw a rise in donations coming in,” Thursby said. In each of the past three annual fundraising cycles, the band’s goals were surpassed. The first, for $5,000, was met in a week, with a $15,000 matching donation coming in that was met as well. The next time, with uniforms as the goal, a $10,000 goal was set and passed by a few thousand. Now, two $50,000 endowments
are in place, one for scholarships and one for a Machine “emergency” fund that can apply toward anything from bus repair to helping a student with money needs. Many fans cannot imagine going to games without the band. When alumni took to Boston to cheer on the Maverick Men’s hockey team in the NCAA Frozen Four championship, part of the appeal was seeing—feeling—the presence of the Maverick Machine at the Boston arena. “There’s nothing like the Maverick Machine. There really isn’t,” hockey fan and alum Michelle Schooff said. “Michael Thursby does such an incredible job getting the crowd going and even the chants going,” Schooff said. “And you don’t realize how incredibly valuable that is until you go somewhere else and they’re not there.”
RADIO-A-GO-GO
If there were official rules on how to make a radio pledge drive interesting, they would include: Be a station that provides programming that no commercial radio would touch, such as outsider music during morning drive time and talk shows about philosophy on Saturday mornings. Staff the station with volunteers who are doing it for the passion of sharing their niche tastes, guaranteeing for the most part that listeners get exposed to new stuff. You could also give away gold as premiums. Not gold as in legal tender, but box sets by Ray Charles, Townes Van Zant, Warren Zevon. You could bring in local songwriters to perform throughout the year. You could have announcers like Tim Lind and Shelley Pierce who for 20 years have buckled in and hosted the 24-hour Pledge Drive A-Go-Go. These are just a few of the quirks and pillars that have put this 50-year-old campus radio station on some strong footing of late, not the least of which includes listener support. In its spring 2022 pledge drive, the goal was $35,000. By the 10-day pledge drive’s end, pledges to the station surpassed $52,000. Similarly, on a pledge drive before that, the goal was hit on the day before the drive ended, yet contributions continued. “When we take pledges, people tell us why oftentimes,” Pierce said. “It seems like they just appreciate the station for the community. … During COVID when people started watching their pennies and people weren’t working, I thought that’s when we’d struggle to hit the goals. But we actually ended up crushing it, more than normal.” Lind noted that when the last goal was met, the station switched gears and enticed listeners with the idea of funding an HD channel as well as a KMSU app. These ideas kept the pledges coming. “That’s going to be such a huge leap forward compared to where KMSU was, especially when we started off,” Lind said. “Our transmitter was by the Singer sewing machine company and now we’re growing in ways we couldn’t even have foreseen back then.” Lind echoed Pierce’s assessment of why listeners seemed to ramp up recent pledges. “If you look at the way life was during COVID, I think a lot of people really kind of realized what they value and what’s important in life, and with so many places closing down and unavailable or maybe just vanishing entirely, it kind of drove home (that) you need to support things that you really believe in and love, and if it’s part of your life, take a moment and support it.”
Student videos were key in Athletics’ Maverick Week fundraising, which doubled its goal.
KMSU's Tim Lind and Shelley Pierce during a morning pledge drive edition of their morning show 'Shuffle Function.'
A Change for the Best
NSF Fellow Aaron Pacheco digs deeper
By Grace Brandt '13
National Science Federation award recipient Aaron
Pacheco ’22
Well before he was a University student, let alone a National Science Foundation fellow, Aaron Pacheco ran his own general construction and electrical business in California for more than a decade—until a wildfire swept through that state and destroyed his livelihood. In reassembling his world, he set out to pursue a long-held goal of higher education. As he toured universities, he was impressed with Minnesota State Mankato’s welcoming faculty and enrolled in the fall of 2020 as a geography major. His work pursuing the degree clarified for him the human side of his land studies. “When you’re doing human geographic research, you have statistics, but you’re also dealing with people,” Pacheco said. “You’ve got to include the human element to it so that people aren’t reduced to a bunch of numbers. There are real people that we’re talking about, so [the question is] who are they and why does this matter?” Earlier this year, Pacheco utilized connections he had made during his time working at the Region Nine Development Center in Mankato to travel to Germany and study how to best use the abilities of incoming migrants in Germany’s economy. Everything changed when Russia invaded Ukraine. Setting aside his research project, Pacheco joined other volunteers in transporting donations to eastern Europe for refugees, even working within Ukraine at times. In April, Pacheco learned he had received a National Science Foundation fellowship, which offers students a chance to pursue a fully funded Ph.D. program. Once more, Pacheco had to abruptly change plans, returning to the U.S. to finish his undergraduate degree. He will start his Ph.D. program at Indiana University, Bloomington, and his research will focus on how the effects of climate change are affecting people’s migration patterns, specifically around areas that have been hit harder by increased natural disasters such as flooding. While many people leave these areas to escape the dangerous weather conditions, Pacheco noted that more people quickly move in to fill the vacant areas, and he wants to know who these people are, what they’re bringing to areas and how to best help them succeed. It’s a continuation of the connection he experienced between the science of geography and the people it affects. “My passion really is studying and working with people,” he said. “I want to study and find things out about the world, how we live in it and how we can continue to move forward and make progress.”
University Fulbright Scholars Take on the World
By Grace Brandt '13
Kimberly Johnson has taught courses in special education within Minnesota State University, Mankato’s College of Education since 2014 and, this fall, she’ll be teaching more. But while the content of her upcoming courses will be similar, the location will be quite different: the University of Makeni in Sierra Leone. “I’m incredibly honored by the opportunity,” said Johnson, who will be utilizing her sabbatical period as a Fulbright Scholar in order to pursue this project. “Everyone has been very supportive, and I feel like because of all these people that this is possible.” The Fulbright Program is run through the U.S. federal government in partnership with more than 160 countries across the world. Scholars of several different levels are chosen to participate in exchange programs to study, teach or pursue research, with the government funding their efforts and paying their expenses. Johnson was selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in April and will spend 10 months in Sierra Leone, leaving in September and returning in July 2023. Her project focuses on teaching instructors there how to better include students with special needs, from program development to community engagement. She explained that she reached out to several organizations around the world who were working with the Fulbright program, and the University of Makeni instantly responded and forged a strong connection. “One of the challenges that I know that I will face is making sure that I’m going in being a really good listener,” Johnson said. “I want to make sure I’m helping them reach their vision of this, not my vision of this. My goal is to just fully participate and get as much out of the experience as I can.” As a student, University alum Colton Corcoran ‘21, who earned a degree in civil engineering, was awarded a Fulbright grant to pursue studies in structural sustainability in Germany for the 2022-2023 academic year. In addition, Sarah Lee Henderson, a professor in the University’s Department of English, was selected to teach at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan last year. Henderson spent five months in early 2022 teaching writing skills to English professors who were natives and who would teach English to nonnative speakers. “Getting to see [my graduate students’] home country or their home region, learning about it and understanding others’ experience, really allows me to come back to my teaching here at the University and have a better understanding of the students that I’m working with, and how I can best advance their graduate research and their future teaching,” Henderson said.
