Raising Expectations
Stepping up as dean of students during the College’s most difficult semester in recent history, Mike Raters ’85 led efforts to address the changing needs of students while keeping the Gentleman’s Rule front and center in their lives.
You couldn’t have imagined a much more difficult semester for Mike Raters ’85 to take over as dean of students.
During the Fall of 2008 the Wabash community would grieve the death of beloved professor Bill Placher ’70, the death of freshman Johnny Smith, and the closing of Delta Tau Delta, even as the Great Recession was dropping the College’s endowment by almost $100 million and adding fiscal pressures to an already bleak beginning of winter.
During the next 11 years, Raters guided the Dean’s Office toward the most collaborative and student-focused approach in the office’s history, including programs like the Housing and Education Leader’s Partnership (HELP), Wabash Fraternity Advisors, Wabash Acts Responsibly (WAR Council), Dean’s President’s Council, and the Mental Health Concerns Committee, as well as the Title IX office. Raters also oversaw career services during its evolution into a highly effective professional development program.
He stepped down in May after 15 years—four as associate dean, 11 as dean—but continues to serve as a special assistant to President Gregory Hess to help with the transition, advising Acting Dean Greg Redding ’88. WM sat down with Raters to talk about the challenges and rewards of serving his alma mater in the Dean of Students office.
Can you tell us a little about that difficult first semester?
I remember I was on a plane, flying to a seminar for first-year deans in Washington, D.C.—including a session in crisis management—and as I’m landing, my phone starts jumping out of my pocket. I’ve got 13 messages, and I listen to the first one and it’s my wife, Julie, and she is crying, saying Johnny Smith has died. The next is President White. Then Dr. Warner.
I went straight from the gate to the ticket agent, and I was back on campus that evening, working from that point on. I never made it to that conference.
What do you wish you’d have known when you started?
When Julie and I talked to my parents about my coming to Wabash as the Associate Dean, my dad started firing questions away. My mom was the talker in their relationship, but she was silent. Finally, she said, “I just have one question. How are you going to keep a straight face when you’re talking to these young men? Because there’s no way they aren’t going to do the same things you and your classmates did.”
Now, she was mostly right. I was pretty well prepared. But these guys are creative, and they’ve surprised me on occasion.
Did the students change at all during your years as dean?
What’s different? Faces in phones, social media, the pressures of that. Frankly, social media is a whole new dimension of the “at all times both on and off campus” element of the Gentleman’s Rule.
But it’s more that the world around our students has changed. At the core, Wabash students are the same—they’re creative, focused, intense, competitive, passionate.
That’s the beauty of the Rule. I went to a conference of my peers from GLCA and ACM institutions one year, and it was the “Summer of the Drone.” Other deans are talking about how much time they’ve had to spend on drones and the writing and implementation of drone policy. They start going around the room, but when they get to me, the veterans in the room just start shaking their heads. And I say, “Well, I’ve spent zero time on drones. I haven’t written up any policies about invading privacy or intimidating others. It’s all there in the one rule.”
Your job sometimes means seeing the worst of a student’s days.
It can be a challenge sometimes to celebrate a student when you know the whole story. Every Awards Chapel, I’m sitting there next to Dean [of the College Scott] Feller, and so-and-so student will be getting an award. The professors are saying what an unbelievable student this young man is, and I’m thinking, Sure, some of the stuff he’s done is unbelievable, let me tell you. But Dean Feller and the faculty know this young man from his brightest side, and I know him from a little darker side.
On one level, it’d be really easy to say, “Look, you screwed up, you’re done, get out of my office, pack your bags and go.” But I hope that in the way I dealt with those young men that I modeled our Gentleman’s Rule, that I put myself in their shoes first. That I raised the expectation for them and for me. That we both rose to the level of those expectations.
Do you ever see the best of a student’s days, too?
In my first year as associate dean, Dean [Tom] Bambrey ’68 went off to a conference that started on the Sunday after the Bell game. I’m nervous as I walk in on Monday, and—well, it wasn’t a perfectly quiet day, let’s put it that way. But by 4 p.m., I start thinking to myself, We survived my first Bell weekend, and in walks this young man… I won’t go into the details, but I learned never to declare victory early.
The following year, it’s Bell game weekend at DePauw, and we win. I’m off to the side trying to keep the DePauw people from our guys as they go to get the Bell, and I look across the field and see the young man I’d had to discipline the year before. He points right at me and he’s running full-speed at me. All the focus is on the Bell. If he wants to take me out, he’s going to be able to. And he gets to me and grabs me in a big bear hug and says, “This is why I wanted to come back to Wabash. Look at this. This is why I’m glad we worked this out so that I could come back.”
I remember a young man who was expelled due to academic dishonesty. It was my job to deliver that news. I didn’t enjoy it, but I did it. We talked about how this had better not define him, how he needed to make things work for himself and his family—he had a young child at the time. Today he’s a mover and shaker in the non-profit world. When we talk now, he’s really engaging, and over the years I’ve taken him up on his offer to talk to students who are in a similar boat here.
Very few people know about those stories—and they can’t know the details, we keep those quiet—but they’re rewarding. They mean something to me. But I hope it means more to the young men involved.
What are you most proud of?
I’m proud that despite a few key challenges, we stayed true to our core, which is to be student-centered as much as we humanly could. And on the greatest challenges where we made progress, student leadership was at the center of it. Our students are sharp, and they give us our best chance of finding the right solutions.
I’m proud that my final senior class [2019] had the highest freshman-to-sophomore retention in College history and then graduated with the highest four-year graduation rate in history, too. The team of professionals I hired or with whom I’ve collaborated to help make that a reality are the reasons this “coach” is ending his tenure at Wabash on a high note.
I’m proud of my Student Life staff, including the coaches.
And I told the Class of 2019 at the Deans’ Breakfast that they would graduate with my all-time favorite Wabash student. I’m very proud of my son, Justin. It wasn’t always easy, but he showed the kind of quiet toughness that mostly goes unnoticed and achieved beyond his father’s GPA.
A lot of people have looked to your leadership as the College has taken a closer look at mental health. What have you learned about mental health as Dean?
I appreciate the word you used there: leadership. At times it felt more like people were looking to the Dean’s Office to have the responsibility for mental health, to make sure everyone is healthy and acting with their health in mind. Yes, I have leadership over it, but it’s too much to be held responsible for the decision-making of 17 to 23-year-old men.
What did I learn? I learned it’s a lot like anything else. Raise expectations, bring a lot of voices to the table, recognize that there is no magic wand to fix challenges either universally or individually.
My leadership has been to bring in and collaborate with good, motivated minds on these topics. Students, faculty, staff, counselors, national experts, national programming, etc. On a lot of issues we get better when we keep the matters in the hands of our students, and so we’ve gone to them and said, “We’re all ears, and we’ll help run this effort. Help us get better.”
In some ways this goes back to Awards Chapel, when you’re seeing exceptional students win awards—some of them are exceptionally healthy, and some are facing exceptional trials.
One of our unique challenges as a college for men is that young men so often come here without having been taught to talk about mental health issues. Mental health awareness is a part of the fabric of this institution, and we’ve tried to normalize and, dare I say, make it “manly” to talk about these things.
What’s next for you? Do you know yet?
I’ve gotten good advice to take my time on this. I’ve got options, and I’m letting those percolate a little.
My family is the most important thing to me. I came to the College with a personal mission statement on the top of my resume that said something like, “While keeping my family first, I will lead others to success…” I’m getting back to that family piece.
You’re serving as special assistant to the president during this transition. What’s that entail?
It primarily means having Acting Dean Greg Redding ’88 as ready as he can be by Ringing In Saturday. My first week was spent making a laundry list of terms and concepts that run the Dean’s Office. Dean Redding has had what I call “pop-up storms” that have moved some things to the top of the list. But that’s the job.
How did you know it was time to move on?
I’m not sure I can pinpoint that; I just knew. I can tell you when I absolutely knew I’d made the right decision.
At one point as I’m watching Commencement this year, on the stage from left to right is Rob Johnson, who was a mentor of mine both as a student and as a dean; then Mauri Ditzler, who was the dean of the College when my family came to Wabash in ’04, and he lived in the Herron house, where we live now; then Professor Rick Warner, who came off sabbatical to step in as associate dean in a pinch and became my son’s advisor; then Justin, who is walking across to get his degree.
At that moment, I’m thinking, I’m not sure it gets any cooler than this. Let’s ride off into the sunset and see what else is out there.
—interview by RYAN HORNER ’15