In Marquette, growth plans at Northern expected to benefit the city

• Northern Michigan University is aligning with Marquette as the school aims to grow
• NMU’s president said the school can play a stronger role in the city’s economic vitality
• Creating workforce opportunities will benefit students and the area’s year-round economy, he said

Marquette is vibrant and poised for growth, as Bridge Michigan explored in recent stories published about the biggest city in the Upper Peninsula.

Many say Marquette also is exemplary for Michigan as the state tries to figure out its next steps toward economic stability and prosperity, and to stem declines.

One “secret weapon” in Marquette is Northern Michigan University, home to about 7,400 Wildcats and about 1,200 employees.

Bridge spoke with NMU President Brock Tessman this fall, following reports about the improving connection between “town and gown.”

That’s coming as Northern enrollment inched up 3% this year, a win for the school that previously had been losing students faster than most Michigan universities. 

The increase makes the school a bit like its host community: Marquette, too, is growing, despite most of the state losing ground. And, thanks to harsh winters and its location on the rural Lake Superior shoreline, the largest city in the Upper Peninsula (with about 21,000 people) also needs to find its niche among prospective residents.

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“(Despite) the strength of the fit for the people who love it here, we are not for everybody,” Tessman told Bridge about NMU. 

As a result, the people who attend school at NMU are the ones who “fall in love” with the place and become, Tessman said, “our best advocates.”

Tessman came to NMU in fall 2022, a time when Marquette started to confront its growth potential as a tourist community and bright spot in Michigan. The university is on a similar path, seeking controlled growth after enrollment declines in most Michigan universities. 

Enrollment this fall was up 3% to 7,409, an increase of 212 students. About 80% are full-time. Enrollment had declined 25% from 2011 to 2021, falling to about 6,800 students, and still stands 1,100 students below 2011. 

City and university interests are dovetailing: Tessman said he is increasing Northern’s outreach to the greater community and wondering how both can grow together. 

Tessman’s background includes stints in Athens, Georgia; Missoula, Montana and Boulder, Colorado. In each place he watched business growth — largely from technology or entrepreneurial roots — either take off or accelerate.

“You started to see venture capital firms around; you started to see more and more out-of-state visitors,” Tessman recalled. “You started to see more job opportunities for students who are graduating.”

Efforts to increase those opportunities in Marquette “are steady and significant,” Tessman said, thanks to well-focused economic developers. 

“You have all of these pieces that are coming together. But as I look across the community in the UP, it feels like we're at the stage where you see the pieces, but we haven't yet really started to climb that curve. 

“There is still a lot of legacy industry, which is essential,” Tessman said, mentioning mining and timber harvesting. “But we haven't kind of come together and begun that real kind of snowballing that I've seen in these other places.”

Northern already has a big role in Marquette’s economy, beyond its place as a top employer. Many residents attended school there and stayed, or ended up going back. 

“If you think about the talent that businesses need in order to grow, if you think about startup culture and sort of what's necessary in order to build new ideas and new businesses, so much of that is flowing through Northern,” Tessman said. 

Across the UP, tourism brings welcomed dollars into a community. But Tessman joins others in pointing out that the cyclical industry is not the answer for large-scale, year-round job growth; neither is a housing market filled with second homes, as many in Michigan have seen elsewhere in lakeside communities. 

In many cases, “those are not sustainable communities for people who are really supporting the growth,” Tessman said. “They're sustainable communities for people who happen to be buying a second home in the region and want a place to land for five weeks during fly fishing season or whatnot.”

Sustainable growth, he said, “has to be driven by the people and the economy that's going to be rooted here.”

That includes students, Tessman added, “but they have to feel like their future is here.”

Changes coming to Northern include a program to pair students with companies in town, including medical device makers. They can get paid while gaining experience in their fields, like an internship, but for a longer term. 

NMU also is planning what Tessman called “the biggest infrastructure and programmatic expansion in the university's history.”

Over 10 years, the school plans to create an arts and athletics district, running from Lake Superior to the heart of campus, he said. The area would welcome the community to shows and sporting events, further cultivating a destination for both.

Northern’s attention to both campus and community will show how “beautiful, remote, rural places (can) become a driver of growth,” Tessman said, “rather than part of a state that somehow needs subsidy or support from … Lansing.”