Dr. Marcus Garstecki told a Barton Community College audience that his career started in athletics, which eventually brought him to Kansas for a job coaching football at Dodge City Community College. 

A native of Beloit, Wis., and a “city boy” up to that point, he said, “I fell in love with the rural way of life.”

He spent a few years recruiting student athletes from around the state, including Barton County. 

But the DCCC president encouraged him to take his career to the next level and earn a Ph.D. so he could follow an administrative path.

“Dodge City was a great place and a place I called home,” Garstecki said. However, he took that advice and went on to become a dean and then a vice president at Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, Nebraska. He gained more experience working with small rural communities and really enjoyed it.

Today, he is the chief enrollment management officer at Northern State University (NSU) in Aberdeen, S. D. His son Jackson is 17 years old and a senior in high school. He and his wife decided this might be a good opportunity to pursue a new adventure. 

Questions from the public Tuesday mentioned the diverse offerings at Barton, including a presence at Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth, and providing job opportunities to soldiers as they leave the military and transfer into the workforce. Garstecki said he looks forward to the challenges and opportunities here.

Mentioning some of his past experience, Garstecki noted that at Mid-Plains he cochaired committees on strategic planning and accreditation. Seeing their connection, the two committees were consolidated into one.

Asked if he was ever involved with a capital campaign, Garstecki said he helped work on a $17 million health science facility at Northern State University.

He has also been involved in an $8 million renovation to a student union and a $9 million project where a college bought a former hospital building and renovated it into student housing and a student center. For that project, administrators had to work with the board of regents and then the state legislature, he said.

Barton’s Board of Trustees Chairman Mike Johnson and others were curious about how the prospective president would view his role in the community. Garstecki said at Aberdeen, he is involved in the chamber of commerce and is on the economic development committee.

“I think it’s critical to be the face of the institution out in the community,” he said. “I want the college to be part of the solution.”

At North Platte, he went to area schools and started initiatives to provide dual credit hours and introduce high school students to career paths they might be interested in pursuing.

An online audience member asked if Garstecki feels it is important for college students to participate and be involved in the community.

“It’s imperative,” he said. “Service is an important thing and it is important as an institution we provide that opportunity to our students.” Likewise, he continued, when community members see students serving in the community, “it goes a long way to saying we are giving back to our communities.”

He agreed that a college president’s role extends beyond the campus.

“You have to be out there sort of leading the charge, talking in the community about collaboration, getting our students downtown and asking, ‘How can we enhance community involvement on campus?’” That already happens here with the Shafer Gallery, he said, and no doubt with athletic events and other fine arts presentations. In Aberdeen, the Chamber of Commerce has an annual CollegePalooza, where businesses welcome students back with sales and promotions, pitching job opportunities and holding scholarship drawings.

If chosen to become the next president of Barton Community College, Garstecki said he’ll naturally bring his own experience and ideas to the table. “I’m big on internships and apprenticeships,” he said. But, he added, “From what I can see, there’s a great team in place to build upon what’s already here.”