Geography Professor: Doug Munski

Emcee, teacher and commentator:
Doug Munski introduces newcomers to the many sides of North Dakota

By Jan Orvik

For the past five years, geography professor Doug Munski has taken a “busman’s holiday,” providing color commentary to some of UND’s newest faculty and administrators as they tour North Dakota each fall.

Munski, a cultural geographer, helps them better understand the state that supports the University.

“Doug has forgotten more about North Dakota than the rest of us will ever know,” said Fred Wittmann, director of ceremonies and special events and one of the New Faculty Tour organizers. “We depend on him to provide information on everything from ancient glacial terrain to anecdotes about individual communities. He’s a great ambassador for UND.” On these tours, Wittmann said, they often meet former students who remember Munski’s classes fondly. And it’s an advantage to have a 28-year faculty member who’s not a North Dakota native show residents their new home.

The tour, now a 15-year tradition, takes between 35 and 40 new faculty and administrators on a three-day bus trek across the state each fall, accompanied by President Kupchella, tour planners Wittmann and Dawn Botsford, and Munski. The route varies each year, and participants visit small-town coffee shops, ranches and farms, as well as attractions such as the Capitol and Heritage Center in Bismarck, Medora, and other towns.

They visit with ranchers, farmers, townspeople, legislators, government officials, alumni, and even prospective students. Munski’s role is to provide “deep background” on the social, political, historical, and geographical aspects of the state. He calls it a cross between a map-and-chart academic field trip and a windshield tour.

“I like to think of myself as a color commentator who helps introduce people to neighbors across the state,” said Munski. “North Dakota is, in many respects, one community. Although there are regional differences and competing institutions, we still function as one community. My goal is to help people better understand what they’re part of as new North Dakota residents.”

Munski enjoys leading discussions about the rural/urban divide in North Dakota and explaining how UND is working to help resolve those issues. But most of all, he enjoys the tour itself, and visiting with tour participants and people along the way.

One year, over dinner at Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s farm near Casselton, they discussed the bonanza farm era along with current state politics. New faculty and administrators learned about North Dakota’s agricultural focus and why UND needs to be concerned about helping ag succeed in the global marketplace. Another year, at the Jerry and Norma Effertz farm near Sawyer, they watched a custom harvest crew work and discussed the custom-cutters’ use of global positioning (GPS) units in agriculture and the role UND’s Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium plays in precision farming. A tour of the Great Plains Synfuels coal gasification plant in Beulah gave participants a sense of the role UND plays as an engine in the state’s economic development through the creation of new technology.

At Bismarck, North Dakota University System Chancellor Robert Potts has joined the tour of Fort Lincoln to echo President Kupchella’s points about the importance of UND to the health of North Dakota. In Watford City, participants met with Gene Veeder, an economic development specialist, rancher, and UND promoter to learn more about efforts to revitalize communities.

Munski’s tours are by no means formal lectures. Instead, he comments on topics such as North Dakota’s population change and its ramifications. “What does that mean for us?” he asks. “It means that it makes sense to look outside North Dakota for students, and allows faculty to see how rural North Dakota’s social and economic fabric has been in decline.” From there, he begins conversations about the rural/urban divide within the state and what UND faculty can do to help stabilize, if not improve, conditions in the countryside and smaller communities.

Munski said he’s often awestruck at the high level of support the tour receives from townspeople. For instance, in Bottineau, alumni of the Varsity Bards (UND’s well-known men’s choral group) gave an impromptu concert. “Experiences like that give new faculty a sense of how important it is to work with people in smaller communities,” Munski said. “They truly want a cooperative relationship between towns and counties with UND. When we visit Stanley and see how Ray Rude, a Stanley native and UND benefactor who made a fortune developing a new diving board, donated to a medical facility and built the aquatics center for Stanley as well as built
the Ina Mae Rude Entrepreneur Center at UND, we see a connection between our alumni in physical therapy and nursing and UND.

And we see how committed people are to North Dakota and the University.”

Originally from Chicago’s North Shore and northern Missouri, Munski is well-known throughout North Dakota for his commitment to students and the state he has called home for 28 years. Each summer, he serves as a volunteer faculty advisor to help new students register and prepare for University life, for which he has received both outstanding service and academic advising awards. He takes the University’s service mission seriously, serving as a faculty advisor, orienting new students, and serving on multiple public service and governance committees. Most of all, though, students who take his geography courses remember him — and what they learned — for life.

Munski, who’s as famous for his quiet demeanor as for his service, insists that helping guide the tour makes him a better teacher. “It’s an informal education on why geographers ought to work more with communities,” he said. “This is public education in an informal setting.”

Another aspect is that experiences from the trip have been used to update the online course Geography 263 — Geography of North Dakota, which is popular with teachers.