Public U Leaders Profile: Marlene Tromp

Your Name:  Dr. Marlene Tromp
Your Title: President
Your Institution: Boise State University
Year You Started Your Current Role: 2019

What’s the most exciting work your APLU Council or Commission is currently undertaking?
I am very grateful for APLU’s work to help institutions navigate the rapidly changing landscape of higher education.  This is a critical time for collective analysis, wisdom, and advisement.  

With regard to the Commission on Economic and Community Engagement, I am very excited about the Commission’s work to support institutional efforts to serve, partner with, and collaborate with our broader communities. The public perception of higher education doesn’t often capture the powerful and profound ways in which we create incredible outcomes in our communities, through our research, with student, faculty, and staff engagement, and so much more.  

Public institutions, in their commitment to serve our people, our nation, and our world, have a special opportunity to make this kind of impact, thinking broadly about our impact.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing individuals in your role on campus?
While there is rapid change in the landscape of higher education—from the new Executive Orders to potential shifts in federal funding and partnerships—demands our time and attention, we must still keep significant energy focused on our responsibility to serve our students and to facilitate the pathbreaking research of our faculty.  The uncertainty and disruption requires a steadfast commitment to our communities and thoughtful engagement with the changes.  I always want to think about what opportunities might lie to educate and engage when there are crises.  This seems another significant time to do so.

What are the most important and valuable partnerships on campus for individuals in your role?
The range of partnerships in higher education are so broad!  Partnering with nonprofits, industry, government agencies, K-12, small business, can all transform communities and even help evolve the university itself.  Those that are most significant for a particular institution are often driven by their particular research strengths, student opportunities, and mission.  It is, in fact, our great breadth of avenues for and ways of connecting that make the network of public institutions so impactful across our country and the world.  

Describe your university in three words.
Innovative, nimble, and hardworking.

If you could go back and give yourself advice on the first day of your job, what would you say? 
Keep connecting with the collective wisdom around you and keep asking questions.  Remain the learner you were when you began in your field.

What is the best book you’ve read recently? 
I am a Victorianist, and recently read one of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s 80 novels, Phantom Fortune.   I am currently reading Lydia Millet’s We Loved It All and Richard Powers’s Playground.

What is your favorite TV show? 
I loved The Office, but I have also loved What We Do In the Shadows—or anything else by Taika Waititi.

What was the last thing you cooked or baked? 
I cook and bake constantly, often in the small hours of the morning.  I baked a loaf of sourdough and made a batch of soup for my lunches for this week.