At the College of Menominee Nation, we are proud and honored to have people from numerous walks of life brighten our halls. With Faces of CMN, the Institutional Advancement department speaks with staff, faculty, alumni, and students to learn more about them, their lives, and how they help shape the College's legacy.

Could you please give us your basic information: name, title, and a brief descriptor of what you do at CMN?

I’m Lucy Fenzl, the Dean of Academic Success. Also, I’ve continued to teach in the Biology department - I started out at CMN as Biology Faculty before I became the Dean.

How long have you been with CMN?

I came in in 2012; Dr. Kelli [Chelberg], and Ann Walenski came in around the same time, we all came in together.

Are you an alumnus of CMN, and if not, how did you find your way here?

No, I’m not an alumnus, but I happened to be teaching in Illinois at Kishwaukee College in Malta, IL back in the early 2000’s, and I…hated it. I lived in a little farmhand’s cottage, in his front yard, and I was surrounded by corn.

Oh, gosh. <Laugh>

I was six hours away from my father, who was undergoing things like a knee surgery and strokes, and needed my help. I was traveling - in one summer, I put 30,000 miles on my car! - to help my father, who lived in Wisconsin. I grew up on a farm, surrounded by trees, and I loved that. I really wanted to be around trees more. Instead, I was living a mile from a pig farm, and it stunk, and half a mile from a crop duster, which meant that I always had to keep my windows closed, and my doors, and my car would always have this layer of DUST all the time.

I really…

Needed a change?

I needed to go back to Wisconsin, it was calling me. I started a hard target search of all the colleges in the state, and originally applied for the position that Dr. Kelli [Chelberg] is in. The dean at the time called me back after I got back to Illinois, and said, “You know, we have a Science position open, would you be willing to change your cover letter and re-submit an application?” So, I did, had an interview, and it was one day after my interview to get into a doctoral program at Marian. Part of that interview was asking about my research interests, and of course my father had a tree farm and we were doing our own forestry research. There were so many things that were just lining up at that time, and within a week [CMN] called me back, and I said, “Yay! I get to go back to Wisconsin!”

Fantastic. Well, it’s been just about twelve full years here. What about the College appeals to you now?

It’s a couple of things! First, it is the trees, the forest. I grew up in northern Wisconsin, and our farm had cattle, but when I was in high school, my father turned our farm into a tree farm. I’ve always been around forestry, and the sciences. The other appeal for me is that CMN is a small college, it has that family feel. I love the fact that I can get to know my students and my students can get to know me. Our classroom sizes are smaller, so I can do so much more with the students than I can if it’s just a gigantic lecture hall where I’m just talking to a bunch of serial numbers, where I don’t know the students personally. I can see them on the street, at Walmart, wherever, and they know me, I know them. The faculty are a family, all of our staff meet and see each other out in the community. I did teach elsewhere for about three years, at a relatively large college, but I didn’t…the appeal was not there. I was making connections with some of my students, but not the way that I do here. 

I walk down the hall and know that I’m making a difference in my students’ and faculty’s lives, and that’s part of why I moved into the Dean of Academic Success role, it allows me to be a voice for the faculty as well.

Is there a particular moment that made you feel like a core part of the institution, part of the - it could be a cliched term, but part of the CMN family?

Okay, so: what a lot of people don’t know is that I come by my own story of indigeneity. My grandfather was a migrant reindeer herder in northern Finland, a Sami Indian. He came from a reindeer herding family, but it was never talked about. When he emigrated, he had a family in Lansing, and a family in northern Wisconsin. He put an ad in a national newspaper for a wife, and my grandmother happened to come over on a boat about a month before the Titanic sank. She answered the ad, sight unseen, packed her bags and moved to Wisconsin, married my grandfather. They had my mother, but there was conflict between my grandfather and grandmother over, even, her name. One wanted to call her by her Sami name, which was Anna Kaisa, and the other wanted her American name, Anne Catherine. We all know which one won that one, but my mother was always torn between these two worlds, and never talked about her own indigeneity because of that conflict. So we never talked about it as children.

And, then, of course, I got here. When President Caldwell was the director at SDI, a few years ago, he invited me to come to the Culture Building to meet some of the Sami visiting as a part of the equity grant they were working on. He happened to overhear me talking to one of them, asking about how to inquire as to the reindeer ear marking registries in each of the three countries. Reindeer are owned by families, handed down to the eldest male historically. Now, it’s a little looser, they’re allowing for daughters to inherit herds, but, what they do is take little notches out of an ear, they hand down the herd, and then the recipient would put a little curve on those same ears. So these reindeer have all these specific markings, and one herder would know another family’s ear markings. In Norway, there’s an app for that, as it turns out. <Laugh>

Well, President Caldwell happened to hear me talking about the reindeer herders, leaned over and asked, “Are you Sami?”

I said, “Yeah, why?” I was very timid about it, talking about my own indigeneity! This conflict that my mom and grandparents had about it, none of my brothers and sisters ever talked about it with each other. My eldest brother, who had actually lived with my mother and grandparents, until my grandfather died, never really talked about it. So, then I started asking questions, and he started telling me all these stories that our grandpa told him. It started this whole journey of me, helping my own family find our indigeneity, and all because I’m at CMN. Eventually, Rebecca Edler was able to help me get assistance from Madison last May, to go to Norway to visit with the north and south Samis, and it…changed my life.

That’s kind of beautiful.

Being able to embrace my own indigeneity, because of being here at this college, I know that I’m supposed to be here, for that purpose. Not just to help other Native students to connect to their own indigeneity, but also for myself, and my family, getting back to our own indigeneity, to the point where I’m hoping to expand what we currently do with the Sami - our sustainable agriculture, trying to identify some grant funding to do some indigenous agricultural exchanges with the reindeer herders…there’s all sorts of things that are now rolling in my head, to help our faculty and help our students see how alike they are from one Indigenous community to somewhere halfway across the world. It was so amazing to watch these students embrace not only their few differences but the number of similarities with the Sami, with the Maori [during IPSI this past June], with Indigenous Ireland, the Inupiak from Alaska. Governments across the world have not been kind to Indigenous communities, and it’s wonderful for our students to see that they’re not alone even as they walk between two worlds, and they’re all fighting the same fight.

Is that willingness to talk about our indigeneity something that sets an education at CMN apart from other schools?

You know - and I’ll own this statement! - colonialism has stripped away our ability to own our culture, our indigeneity, no matter what culture we come from.

But yes, 100%, absolutely. We are not a mainstream institution. The tribal college and university system as a whole is serving the Indigenous communities where they are, in their places. It serves based on the particular needs of those communities. We’re able to create and adapt curriculum, based on our individual students and tribal needs, which is a need that should be felt throughout higher education. Mainstream institutions just aren’t capable of doing that, where we are.

What do you see as the aspirational “next step” for the College? We’re in the summer semester now, we’re about to offer our first batch of online courses this Fall, but where do you think our road leads? The next couple years, what do they look like?

Well, first and foremost, I have 100% support and confidence in the vision that President Caldwell has set forth for us, as well as his administrative team. They’re very supportive of where we’re going. We’re not just making sure that we’re meeting our students where they are, meeting their needs, but we are now taking that to a broader sense, connecting and collaborating with so many other TCUs and Indigenous communities, to the point where it’ll become second nature to us. We’re gonna be able to pull in or offer our courses to students in Montana, or students on another reservation in Alaska: wherever the case may be, I think it broadens our horizons to all Indigenous students, even those at mainstream institutions. It allows us to open CMN up to cultural curriculum across the United States.

Is there anything you can share as a message of hope and goodwill to the community and students at large?

Any time I’m thinking of hope and goodwill, I’m always thinking about my granddaughter. <Laugh> I think about the things I would tell her, and the first is to never stop dreaming, and to know that your dreams change. You need to follow those dreams, as they change, and you are never too old to dream, or to chase your dreams, and to achieve your dreams. I have students that are older than me, and I’m gettin’ pretty old! <Laugh> At least, my daughter thinks that. My granddaughter calls me “Gaga,” and thinks that Lady Gaga was named after me.

<Laugh> That’s excellent.

I do think that dreams are important, and they’re what will take us and our communities further. They open us up to some really grand experiences. I think that we can’t stop dreaming. It doesn’t matter how young or old you are - and when I say old, I say that generally - you are never too old to chase a dream.

I always say to my granddaughter, you have to do it with sparkle. <Laugh> Chase that dream, but do it with sparkle.

I love it. Thank you so much for your time.