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Profile: Kathryn Martin
Leadership, stage right
By Gary Brown

When it comes to running a university, Minnesota Duluth Chancellor Kathryn A. Martin designs a strategy, sets the stage and calls for action.

Ironically, she does the same thing when she’s not running a university.

In the summer, you can find the 13-year chancellor calling the shots from a different stage. She has directed two plays recently – both musicals for children as part of the university’s theater for the community. The casts are UMD theater majors.

In 2004, Martin directed the American premiere of an opera for children entitled “The Secret of the Talking Bird,” which featured a script that a UMD faculty member fashioned after a medieval folktale. And in 2007, Martin oversaw “A Year with Frog and Toad,” based on Arthur Lobel’s popular series.

The latter was premiered by the nationally recognized Children’s Theater of Minneapolis as a jazz musical. “It was sold out for the run, and I even got a good review in the newspaper,” Martin said. “The children just squealed – it was so fun being in the audience. They all knew the Frog and Toad stories, and children have no trouble suspending their imaginations. They are the most honest of all audiences, and I can tell you from experience, they know quality.”

Martin is as comfortable in a classroom or boardroom as she is in a green room. She has spent almost three decades in lofty academic positions – including as a dean at Montana, Wayne State (Michigan) and Illinois, before assuming leadership at Minnesota Duluth – but her roots are just as deep in the performing arts.

Her mother was a community theater director, and the future chancellor went to rehearsals as a way to get out of the house and escape younger brothers and sisters at night. But then, she became interested in the craft and ended up helping with set design.

By the time she matriculated at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana, the drama bug became infectious. She changed her major from pre-med to speech and drama, then earned a master’s in theater from Indiana State and a doctorate in management from the University of San Francisco.

She directed occasionally as the dean of fine arts at Montana, then again at Wayne State. She would have at Illinois, too, but the UMD chancellorship came calling.

“For me, the reward is not only the audiences and working with outstanding students, but also having the opportunity to sit down as a peer with a faculty member and design a show,” Martin said. “It’s not unlike a student-athlete who becomes a graduate assistant working with players who were previously teammates.”

The similarities of directing and being a chancellor aren’t lost on her, either.

“There is more of a connection than anyone would like to believe,” she said, adding wryly, “Whether it’s more so because it’s children’s theater, I’m not sure.”

But the prevailing principles of motivation, collaboration and cooperation necessary in theater are similar to the strategies required in management and leadership roles. “I like to think I am collaborative as a director and as a chancellor,” Martin said.

It’s a characteristic that her supporting casts – both on campus and on stage – would likely endorse.