Angie Cooksy: 0:15

Welcome back to another episode of the Bradley University Podcast. This is Angie Cooksy.

Ben Jedd: 0:20

And I am Ben Jedd.

Angie Cooksy: 0:21

And we the hosts of the podcast because somebody let us do this, Ben.

Ben Jedd: 0:26

I don't know if anybody let us do it. We just did.

Angie Cooksy: 0:29

We did just do this, but it's been so much fun. We are almost in six or seven months of episodes, which is a little bit wild.

Ben Jedd: 0:38

Yeah, we've talked to a lot of folks on campus.

Angie Cooksy: 0:40

I know. It has become one of my favorite things that we get to do, which is share the stories of campus with people that maybe don't get space to tell their story all of the time or are doing really great work on campus, and maybe people just don't know them because they haven't had an opportunity to meet them. And so we get to see all sorts of people from all different roles.

Ben Jedd: 0:57

Yeah. No, it's great.

Angie Cooksy: 0:58

So today's episode, we have Mike King joining us here, who is the director of development in the advancement office. Mike, welcome.

Mike King: 1:05

Thank you. Glad to be with you.

Angie Cooksy: 1:07

We're super excited. We always start the show giving people a little bit of an opportunity to share their story and the path they took to the seat that they're sitting in at Bradley today. I think in a lot of ways it's the coolest part of the show that we do because we get to just learn about your experience and your story. And you told me something on the way in this morning that I hope that you share. And I if you don't, I will I will ask later. But what's been your journey like to Bradley and to the director of development?

Mike King: 1:38

Well, I grew up right across the street from campus. So Bradley has really been part of my life from my earliest memories. I literally rode my tricycle on campus. And I remember things like before Haussler Hall was built, I went to basketball games in the field house. My dad worked at Bradley, so it was really kind of part of our – and my siblings – our early life. And so when it came time to pick a college, it was kind of a no-brainer for me. I was going to Bradley, and I had one other kind of funny thing is my commute to grade school was further than my commute to high school or to college. I went to I walked through campus to go to St. Mark's grade school. And yeah, Bradley has just been a really special place for me from my childhood to my time here as an undergraduate and as an alum as well. So yeah, after graduating, I kind of took an indirect career path. Was in the Chicago area, was in Washington, D.C., back in Chicago, and then started working for Bradley about five years ago in development. And it has been a wonderful homecoming for me to come back here and meet new people, get reacquainted with alums who I've known for years, and so it's it's been a special place for me throughout my entire life.

Angie Cooksy: 3:21

For people that don't know, what is development and what does that actually mean?

Mike King: 3:28

Yeah, so it's– that's a good question. For me it's alumni engagement. I kind of lean a little bit on the friend raising side first.

Angie Cooksy: 3:39

I love that word.

Mike King: 3:40

Yeah, it's– For me, I just I like connecting with people about their Bradley journey and their Bradley story and finding common connection. And I've been really fortunate because of those early childhood experiences I had at Bradley, I can connect with alums on a– from a very wide range of ages.

Angie Cooksy: 4:04

Oh, sure.

Mike King: 4:05

Going back to alums from the 60s all the way through into the 2000s and recent alums. I served on the Alumni Association board in the early 2000s, so I that was a way to connect back to Bradley and with alums of different ages. But getting back to your question, yeah, I think development is about engaging with alumni, trying to find where their interest areas are with Bradley still, or trying to ignite areas of interest with them and let them know, you know, that Bradley is still a very special place. Yeah. And, you know, it changes and evolves over time, but there are some common threads throughout the different decades and eras that I enjoy kind of finding those connections with alums over those spans of years.

Ben Jedd: 5:02

So when you're going out and you're talking with all of these different alums, you've probably run across some really interesting stories. Absolutely. Are there any stories that really stick out that are that you would love to tell?

Mike King: 5:16

Sure, sure. Yeah, there's a there's a couple that really come to mind. One was an alum who I met in my first year on the job, so this was back in 2021, and he's been around for a while and been supporting Bradley in a in a big way. Phil Wilmington hosts our golf outing in the Chicago area and has been doing that for many years. He generously hosts everyone at a golf club that he's one of the owners of, Royal Fox Country Club in St. Charles, Illinois. And he told me, so he graduated in the late 70s, and he said, when he met me, he said, Are you related to Dean King? And I said, Yeah, I am. I said, Yeah, he's my dad. And he said, Oh, he's like, I owe my first job to him. And he said that when he was graduating in career services, you literally had to get in line. There was no, you know, there's no online scheduling or anything like that. Right. So you got in line to to interview with the different recruiters, and at that time Proctor & Gamble was coming to Bradley and interviewing you know on a regular basis. And Phil, Phil kind of was poking fun at himself. He said, you know, I'm not a guy who stands in line. I wasn't gonna do that.

Angie Cooksy: 6:40

Love that.

Mike King: 6:41

Yeah. So the interviewer with Procter & Gamble, I think he talked to someone in Career Services before he was gonna leave, and he said, You know, is there anyone who could help me review this list of students who I interviewed and see if there's any key people missing who I might be able to still engage with before I leave campus? And the person said, You should talk to Dean King. So he went and my dad reviewed the list and he said, Yeah, there's really two leaders here that come to mind. One was a woman leader on campus, and the other one was Phil, and he said, You know, you should try to connect with them if you can. So the the Procter & Gamble recruiter calls up Phil at his fraternity house, and Phil gets on the phone and the guy says, Hey, this is so-and-so with Procter & Gamble. I'm here recruiting. I wanted to see if you'd like to talk. And Phil hangs up on him. He thought it was one of his friends pranking him.

Angie Cooksy: 7:37

This is amazing.

Mike King: 7:40

So the guy's like– so he calls back and he says, Look, Dean King just told me I should reach out to you before I leave campus. If you want to have an interview with Procter & Gamble, get over here to Career Services in the next 30 minutes.

Angie Cooksy: 7:53

It's now.

Mike King: 7:55

Yeah, so Phil throws on a suit, runs over there, and he gets the job. They you know, Procter Gamble hired like two students that year from Bradley, and Phil was one of them.

Angie Cooksy: 8:04

Wow.

Mike King: 8:05

And he said, you know, Procter & Gamble has been renowned for this management training program. He said, that totally set me on my career path.

Angie Cooksy: 8:13

Yeah.

Mike King: 8:13

And he's like, if it wasn't for your dad, that never would have happened.

Angie Cooksy: 8:16

Do you hear that a lot? My husband's a Sigma Chi, so I know the legend and lore of your dad a little bit. Do you hear that a lot kind of in your work as people just have known him and then now know you?

Mike King: 8:27

Yeah. That is probably the most just crystal clear example of an impact he made. But yeah, I've heard other some, you know, I got in trouble that kind of stuff. I thought I was gonna get kicked out, and he really kind of helped, you know, get me back on track. And so I've heard different versions of that story many, many times. So yeah, so that was– But that was really neat to have that first interaction– and Phil is such a great guy, and just to have that be my first interaction with him was pretty amazing. Yeah.

Angie Cooksy: 9:06

I think it's just such a good representation of really the Bradley experience because I think so many people have a story that's like that. Maybe it wasn't– Somebody was their Dean King, right? Like somebody made a call for somebody, somebody pulled a student out of the hallway and said, I need you to talk to this person. And I love that that's the story you shared because I feel like we get to hear it so many times, but I don't know that we appreciate how part of the Bradley culture it is. Like that personal attention is who we are here.

Mike King: 9:37

That's right. Yeah. You're exactly right. There are many, many other people at Bradley, many of whom have been here many years and decades, who I think there are similar stories of, who took that personal time to make that connection and make a difference for them.

Ben Jedd: 9:55

So you've been part of Bradley since you were riding a tricycle, right? And you're here now as an employee or a student. Your dad worked here. What's a story that you have from when either when you were on campus or as an alum that really like tells your Bradley story?

Mike King: 10:21

Let's see here.

Ben Jedd: 10:22

That you can tell on a podcast.

Mike King: 10:25

Well, I don't know if– I may be able to think of like one little incident, but I can tell you just from a broad standpoint. Bradley made a huge difference for me because when I came to Bradley, I was not like brimming with confidence. I didn't have a bad high school experience, but it wasn't like this confidence-building experience. You know, high school's a tough time for some kids, and it's just and it was one of these things where I wasn't really a part of the in-crowd, so to speak, and that didn't really bother me. But when I got to Bradley, things changed. And I think um for me, my Greek experience with Sigma Chi was an important part of that. It wasn't the only thing, but that was a– that was a key part of it for me, where you know, some juniors and seniors encouraged me to to get involved in different leadership roles in the fraternity and on campus. And that made a big difference. And so I started off, you know, chairing some committees in the fraternity, and I then I got involved in the student senate for a year, and I was in the interfraternity council, and I held some offices in the fraternity chapter as well, and that just changed my my whole outlook and my confidence. And so that was a big, that's really probably the biggest impact I can talk about Bradley. And not to mention, you know, the professors and people in the administration who had an impact as well. But that's really when I came out of Bradley, I was a much different person than when I arrived.

Ben Jedd: 12:17

I think there's a story there that we probably, Angie, need to talk about more, which is Greek life and the impact. I know like Sigma Chi, for instance, made a huge impact on Miles – My brother-in-law was a Sigma Chi – huge impact, right? And I think there's a story there, because there is leadership, right? There's so much that goes into that. So I think that's really, really interesting.

Angie Cooksy: 12:43

And, I mean, as you were telling your story, that feels really similar to my own experience. I mean, I've written about, like– I remember the young woman I came to campus as at, you know, 17 and 18 years old. That person was so different four years later. And yes, certainly some of it was Greek life. I think it's the culture here on campus, it's the way that our professors pull things out of you. I mean, I remember professors in communications being like, no, you can do this. And I was like, I don't– I left one of my first speeches in COM 103 in tears because I did such a terrible job. And now my job is to talk all the time, right? And that girl couldn't even picture this. So I'm so glad that that was something that you shared because I think you're right, we don't talk enough about the evolution that happens sometimes in college, and it's remarkable.

Mike King: 13:37

Yeah, yep. The way I look at it is at Bradley and in general too, Greek life and there's other areas too, but Greek life is a great on-ramp to campus engagement. You can do it through Student Senate, you can do it through the Activities Council, service organizations on campus. But that was really a key on-ramp for me because then I got involved in other organizations. I was on the– I still can't believe it's still called the SABRC. The budget.

Angie Cooksy: 14:12

Love an acronym around here.

Mike King: 14:13

Yeah, I know.

Ben Jedd: 14:15

I thought you were going with ACBU.

Mike King: 14:17

Yeah, there's another one. Yeah. So I was involved in SABRC for the, you know, budget for and spending for different activities on campus. As I mentioned before, the Interfraternity Council, the Student Senate, and but really for me, Sigma Chi was really the start of that. And again, Bradley's been, I think, a special place for Greek life historically. Yeah. But it doesn't mean you have to be Greek to have a really meaningful campus experience at Bradley.

Ben Jedd: 14:53

No, but I do think that you do have to go all-in and be involved at Bradley. Like I'm– And it might be you are involved in your one thing and you are like all-in on that, or you can be involved in 15 different things and be all-in on those 15 things. And I think that that's what's really a differentiator.

Mike King: 15:16

Yeah. Yeah.

Angie Cooksy: 15:17

For sure. I would totally agree. Shifting gears a little bit because I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about your role and the connection to our alumni. And I would be curious from you, what would you hope alumni take away from things like this podcast? And how would you encourage alumni to maybe re-engage if they haven't been engaged in a while?

Mike King: 15:41

Yeah, so that's really one of my the key areas of my job is to engage with alums who are across the spectrum. Some alums I engage with are all-in on Bradley, and you just love those alums. And others have not thought about Bradley in 20 or 30 or 40 years. And just trying to reconnect with those alums and getting their interest level, and you know, in some cases, some people they they graduate and they move on, and that's it. They don't look back, and that's okay. But others I think there's opportunities. There's life gets busy for many alums, and it's like, oh, you know, this is not the right time, but I still want to reconnect down the road. And sometimes you just get that timing right. And maybe someone has raised a family and now they've got some extra time on their hands, and it's like, yeah, now I want to reconnect. I want to reconnect with Bradley, I want to reconnect with the people I was in school with. I just met with an alum in– actually, a couple in Denver two weeks ago, and he said, you know, I'd really like to find out more about getting involved on the Bradley Alumni Association Board. And so I'm connecting him with Tom Richmond, and we want to try to make that happen. So I would say to those alums, no matter where you are in your interest level with Bradley and how connected you have or have not been since you've left, Bradley is still a very special place. And at some point I think alums, when they think about the impact that Bradley had on their life at a really formative time, they will truthfully acknowledge like this was a really important place for me, overwhelmingly. And I want to give back in some capacity. With my time, with– I just say, hey, help us be a Bradley cheerleader. Talk up Bradley among your friends, among you know, friends with kids who are looking at college, about the, really I call it a Goldilocks school. It's just the right size. Not too small, not too big. I've got a great Goldilocks story. I had lunch with an alum in South Carolina a year ago. His name, I'll tell you his name is Bill Ross. Bill graduated in the late 70s. He was a chemistry major. And I was taught, I was kind of doing my thing saying, Oh, you know, Bradley's a Goldilocks school. And he said, Oh, I'll tell you my Goldilocks story. So he was a chemistry major. He said, I really had no problem with chemistry in high school. He's like, I just gotta have a great teacher. I get to Bradley and he's like, I am lost. I'm in my my first intro chemistry class and I'm getting a D in it. I'm like, I'm gonna have to change my major and do something else. So in early October, the phone rings in his dorm room uh some you know weeknight, and it's his professor, Tom Cummings, who was the chair of the department. And he's like, Bill, I notice you're you're struggling in this intro class. You know, I just want to see what's going on. Is there a problem? And he said, Professor Cummings, I don't get it. It's not clicking. I understood this stuff in high school, but this is a different level. And he said, Bill, tell you what, after class tomorrow, come to my office, we'll work through some things. And so he comes and he does this like after five or six classes. Professor Cummings spends, you know, like 45 minutes or an hour after class, and about within, you know, you know, four weeks or so, it's like it clicks. I got it. And he said it totally he said I was already preparing, I was gonna have to shift to business management or some other major. And he said, but I stuck with it and I finished in chemistry, and now he has a very successful dental practice in South Carolina.

Ben Jedd: 19:56

That's awesome.

Mike King: 19:57

And he said if I went to Purdue or Illinois or another large school like that, no way does that ever happen. The chair of the department is not going to call a freshman in their first semester saying, Hey, I notice you're struggling. And he was like, that's my Goldilocks story.

Ben Jedd: 20:15

That's so great.

Mike King: 20:16

Yeah. Yeah. So that's that really is a great illustration of the special place that Bradley is.

Angie Cooksy: 20:23

Yeah, for sure. You mentioned you know, having people be cheerleaders. I imagine that one of the challenges of your role and and the work in advancement and alumni is helping people see how they can be involved. And so, you know, I think people often think like, oh, if advancement's calling me, they just want money. You know, like right or wrong, that's kind of the vibe, right? Everywhere. It's not a Bradley thing, it's just sort of an everywhere thing. What are some other tangible ways? You mentioned the alumni board, like there's a parents board at Bradley. Like, what are some other ways that that alumni, whether they're 22 or 82 or 102, like what could they do?

Mike King: 21:04

Yeah. So one thing that you know, Tom Richmond is relatively new to his leadership role in alumni relations, a couple years now. And Tom has done a great job of really trying to ramp up our alumni engagement both on campus and bringing alums to campus, but also bringing campus to alumni and having events around the country, mostly in larger metro areas, but just doing simple things like basketball watch parties, but other you know receptions, special events. President Shadid has been really good about getting around the country. In fact, I think he– I believe he's in Dallas right now as we speak for a special event down there to introduce himself to Dallas alumni. And so there's an example of where if someone wants to raise their hand, and again, just another alum I met with in Denver two weeks ago, he's younger, has a young family, doesn't necessarily have the capacity to make a large gift to Bradley, but he said, Hey, I want to help organize the next alumni event here. And so he's organizing a basketball watch party in January for us. He found the location, they've agreed to, you know, air the game. We're gonna get– and Denver has a very large alumni base now. For those who you you might be interested to know, Denver has over a thousand living alumni–

Angie Cooksy: 22:31

And a direct flight to Peoria now.

Mike King: 22:34

That's right. Yeah.

Angie Cooksy: 22:34

So come on down!

Mike King: 22:35

–within 60 miles of downtown Denver. So it's– that's a hot area for us to try to– and so he's organized an event. So that's one example of you know, help organize an event if in your area. Tom Richmond would love to have that kind of collaboration. And that's probably I think the one of the best examples of something that's kind of an easy way to re-engage. Or maybe if you don't want to be the lead, you can kind of help and say, look, I'll reach out to, you know, 10 of my friends and try to get them to come and come to the event myself. That's a great starting point, I think, for alums to reconnect. Yeah.

Angie Cooksy: 23:18

You have anything else?

Ben Jedd: 23:19

No, I'm good.

Angie Cooksy: 23:20

All right. Well, our last question on the show is always the same. And we usually get the same reaction. So we'll see, we'll see what yours is. We talk a lot about other people on the show. We talk a lot about what makes Bradley so special. But we host the show to get to learn more about individual people. And so our last question is always, Mike King, what are you unapologetically exceptional at?

Mike King: 23:43

Oh wow.

Angie Cooksy: 23:44

That's the reaction we get every time.

Mike King: 23:48

I think for me it is truly meeting with alums and not thinking, oh, what can I fundraise from this person, but how can I connect with this person and find out more about them on just a human interest level. And it's not, it's not an act that I'm putting on. I mean, my boss might not be happy to hear this, but my first thought is not how much money can this person contribute to Bradley. And that's not even my second thought. It's more just connecting with them and finding a personal connection, mostly about Bradley, but sometimes it's a different connection entirely that is not directly related to Bradley. So that I guess if I have an something I'm exceptional at, that's what I think I'm pretty good at because I enjoy it so much. So yeah, that's yeah.

Angie Cooksy: 24:52

That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Is there anything you'd like to add before we wrap up today?

Mike King: 24:58

Yeah, you know, I do have one other story. So one little fun fact that people don't know about me is that I previously lived in the Alumni Center, which is kind of odd. You're thinking like you're probably thinking like, okay, Mike, keep talking because we're gonna edit this out.

Ben Jedd: 25:15

Probably not.

Mike King: 25:19

Now it was before it was the Alumni Center. Angie would remember the previous alumni center in the office.

Ben Jedd: 25:28

It's my office. It was Comstock, right?

Mike King: 25:29

No, it was over on Glenwood, it was next to the Chi Omega sorority house.

Angie Cooksy: 25:34

Yes, yes, it was between Chi Omega and Sigma Chi in the parking lot.

Ben Jedd: 25:37

Yeah, it was between the two.

Angie Cooksy: 25:38

Yeah.

Ben Jedd: 25:39

So it's a little brown house, right?

Mike King: 25:41

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So when I was three years old, Bradley had houses around campus and they would let faculty or staff live. I guess maybe it was kind of part of the compensation package, and they're like, you know, you can live there. So, Bradley in 1971, I think it was, said to my parents said, You can live in that house. So my parents, we moved into that house before it was the alumni center. And so I have memories of that. The one– a couple things– there were two staircases in that house, one, the main staircase, but then one that went back to the kitchen. And as a three-year-old, that is just like what that was so exciting to have three or two different staircases. There were also buckeye trees or a buckeye tree in the backyard of that house, which was really exciting for someone who's three or four years old. But so that uh that's kind of a funny little tidbit that– so I really actually lived on campus when I was three and four years old. And then I think President Abegg finally was like, you know what, we're we're not gonna do that anymore. And so thankfully my parents did not sell their house, so we just moved back to our house about a block away on Maplewood.

Angie Cooksy: 26:54

It's a big commute.

Mike King: 26:55

Yeah, big commute. Yeah.

Angie Cooksy: 26:57

Well, on that note, when we were walking down, I mentioned at the top of the the show, when we were walking in today, we record Hilltop Studio, or we record the podcast in Hilltop Studios, which is in the lower level of University Hall. And you also used to spend a lot of time here, you told me as we were walking in.

Mike King: 27:12

I lived here in my freshman year. My so my parents were like, you know what, you can live on campus. You don't have to stay at home, you know, just have the full–

Angie Cooksy: 27:20

They wanted to shorten your commute.

Mike King: 27:21

Yeah, yeah, or they wanted to get rid of me. So yeah, the funny thing is if I would have lived at home, most of my classes were in Bradley Hall. You would have had a quicker walk. I would have had a shorter commute to my classes than in U-Hall.

Angie Cooksy: 27:33

Well, they wanted to send you away.

Mike King: 27:35

Yeah.

Ben Jedd: 27:35

You needed to go away to college.

Mike King: 27:38

Yeah, yeah. So I lived in the basement of U-Hall. It was just men on that floor, and then their in the rest of the entire dorm was uh was women. So it was just kind of a funny thing, but have fond memories. Haven't been back here in a long, long time, but it's neat to be back here.

Ben Jedd: 27:55

Welcome back.

Mike King: 27:56

Yeah, thank you.

Angie Cooksy: 27:57

Well, we're always so thankful for people like you to come on the show and hang out with us for a little bit. Thank you to the team at Hilltop Studios for helping us produce the show every week. And if anyone wants to come on, including our alumni, if you'd like to if you're in town or even if you're you're away and– there's technology now, we can do these things remotely.

Ben Jedd: 28:15

There is. We are from the future.

Angie Cooksy: 28:16

We are from the future. Please let us know. As always, contact Ben and he will set up time for us to do this. But from Ben and I and everybody at Bradley, thanks everybody. Go Bradley.

Ben Jedd: 28:29

Thanks. Bye bye.