Marquette Senior High School sophomores Dixon Poggi, center, and Roenak Ghiardi, right, interview Northern Michigan University President Brock Tessman on Thursday. The high school newspaper, MSHS In Print, started publishing in January. (Journal photo by Christie Mastric)

MARQUETTE — A day in the life of a student newspaper writer can take that reporter to many different parts of the school.

Or it can take them to the sixth-floor office of a university president.

Marquette Senior High School sophomores Roenak Ghiardi and Dixon Poggi on Thursday interviewed Northern Michigan University President Brock Tessman, who took the helm on Feb. 1. The two students write for MSHS In Print, the school paper that started publication in January.

Ghiardi and Poggi sat down with Tessman in his office that overlooks the city of Marquette, Lake Superior and whatever ore boat that happens to float by.

Many people might believe that print journalism is dead,

“It’s just getting more and more uncommon to see,” Ghiardi said.

“It seemed like an awesome idea for us to try and bring that back to the high school because it’s also really fun to read a printed high school newspaper too. Sometimes kids have a hard time reading, but when they get an issue of the high school paper that has topics that they’re interested in, events that they may have been a part of — maybe a picture of them in it — it really makes you want to read it.”

However, Tessman told the students that he believes print still is relevant, even though the campus newspaper, the North Wind Online, is just that — online.

“There’s something about print because that’s different than if you’re sitting there and everyone is in their own world, scrolling through whatever their feed or looking at something online,” Tessman said.

He recalled reading a newspaper in the high school cafeteria or college dining hall.

“You walk in, and everybody would grab the print paper, and then that’s what you did when you were sitting their eating,” Tessman said. ‘Even with a group of friends, you’d be flipping through the paper and you may be getting into a bit of a debate or something about an opinion piece that’s in there.

“So, it did a lot in terms of building community and the school around the campus.”

Poggi said, “There’s a lot of value with the physical paper itself, especially with it being directly linked to high school students, and it goes as far back as encouraging kids to want to come to school. These kids want to be featured in the paper, or talking about in our paper things that are cool to us.

“When they see their name, when they see their face in the paper, it’s telling those kids, ‘Wow, I did something good in this high school.’ So, when it’s getting handed out to every single student in this school, even the less popular kid gets featured, and now he feels like he’s on top of the world, and whenever everyone’s reading the same thing, everyone’s equal.”

Ghiardi and Poggi asked Tessman many initial questions — and follow-up ones — in about 20 minutes, trading questions back and forth with each other.

One question concerned what Tessman believes is his biggest goal at NMU.

The visionary goal, he said, is to build on something the university already does well: provide an “exceptional” student experience.

“For students who come to Northern, they get to know their professors really quickly,” Tessman said. “They get to know each other in a beautiful campus really quickly because of our great residence halls, the student life on campus, and as time goes on, I think they get to know themselves.”

The practical goal, he said, the enrollment at NMU — as is the case with many campus — has been on the decline.

“My kind of numbers-oriented goal is to stabilize our enrollment on this campus,” Tessman said. “Those two things are tied. I think the more we can provide that exceptional student experience, the more students will come here and the more of those students will stay, so our enrollment will take care of itself.”

He also addressed mental health issues on campus.

“It’s not a university- or school-only challenge,” Tessman said. “It’s a societal challenge for us. We exist within in a society where mental health crises are everywhere, but we have a special responsibility because students come here. They live on campus. This is, I think, a place where lives are transformed.”

Tessman believes there needs to be a shift from a scenario in which individuals feel shamed or challenged to a more community-based approach, noting it’s a call to bolster community resources.

Tessman said NMU has on-site counseling services and what is thought of as a “health-promotions campaign,” which involves letting students know what resources are available and health measures they can take.

“I think we try to promote a healthy balance between work and study and extracurricular activities and leisure time, but getting our students and our employees to understand what those resources are and take advantage of them is a challenge,” Tessman said.

In fact, he acknowledged that doubling the resources in the next 10 or 20 years still wouldn’t bring NMU to where he wants it to be regarding campus mental health.

“And that’s true for any campus,” Tessman said.

The students, who plan to write an article about the interview in an upcoming paper, said they were pleased with how it went.

“It was great,” Ghiardi said. “He made it really easy.”

Poggi said, “It was very cool to be able to talk to someone that high up.”

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.