Maggi Murdock: What an educator should be

After four decades as an educator, administrator and pioneer at the University of Wyoming, Dr. Maggi Murdock will retire following this academic year.

Murdock received her Bachelor’s degree from Creighton University in 1970 before spending 8 years in graduate school. She received both her Master’s degree and her Ph.D. from Tuffs University in Massachusetts.

“I was actually in a Ph.D. program from the very start because of the fellowship that I had received,” Murdock said. “It took me a long time. I graduated from undergraduate school in 1970, so 8 years later.”

Murdock began her work with the University of Wyoming in 1975, prior to completing her post graduate work. She was given a position filling in for faculty members in the political science department that were on sabbatical at the time.

Her focus then moved to the newly established Casper branch campus of UW, where she taught in a temporary capacity before becoming full time faculty and eventually the dean.

“[My husband] got a job with a very good law firm up there in Casper and as it happened the university had just started that branch campus in 1976, so we both moved up there,” Murdock said.

Initially, the Casper branch of UW was separate from UW’s outreach school. Murdock said the Casper branch and the outreach school did many of the same things and that it did not make sense to her that they were separate.

In conjunction with the dean of the Outreach School, Murdock was able to integrate the two schools and improve efficiency.

“We talked about the fact that we were doing many of the same things and that it didn’t make sense to have two separate deans,” Murdock said. “We wanted to integrate the expertise of the staff.”

Murdock said after the integration, when she became Dean of the Outreach School, she worked hard to integrate the staffs. Integration of staffs created an environment wherein if a person from a department went on vacation; there were other competent people to pick up the slack.

In addition to her new role as Dean of the Outreach School, Murdock also became the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs in 2001. After 12 years in those roles, she left administration to return to teaching, or so she thought.

Upon returning from sabbatical, Murdock became vice president for student affairs once again, this time in only an interim capacity. She then returned to teaching in 2015.

While teaching became her passion, Murdock began her undergraduate career with a different goal in mind.

“I always wanted to be a lawyer,” Murdock said. “My dad was a lawyer in Torrington and by brother is a lawyer there now. I started taking constitutional law classes and thought, ‘I really like the law but I don’t want to practice it.’”

Instead, Murdock found herself teaching college students while trying to help fledgling campus find stability. Murdock said she and her colleagues would often have to memorize the transcripts and schedules for all their students because there was no guarantee that they would receive updated versions from the main campus.

She also was present for the advent of teaching via teleconferencing at UW, leading her to interactions with some very interesting students.

Murdock said she had a student that was the loan police officer in a small town, who was balancing those duties and his education in an interesting way.

“I called to see why he sounded so anxious while giving his

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and he said, ‘oh I wasn’t nervous, I had just received a call about a break in,’” Murdock said. “So he had to go find the guy, arrest him, book them in and then come home and [prepare his presentation].”

Teleconferencing brought students from the other side of the law to Murdock’s classes as well. In the 80’s, inmates received Pell grants educational opportunities facilitated by UW.

Murdock said she had two students in medium security facilities and one in maximum security. Due to rules of the prison however, Murdock did one on one lessons each week with the maximum security inmate.

However, the inmate made the best of his circumstances, authoring a research paper Murdock said was one of the best she had ever had.

The topic of the paper was, “Why is there so little violence at the Wyoming penitentiary?” The inmate received permission to interview other inmates and guards and came to the conclusion that because the guards treated the inmates with respect, they treated each other with respect.

Before her adventures in teleconferencing, there was a program in the 70’s called “The Flying Professors,” that involved a university plane that would drop professors in various locations in the state, and pick them up the same day.

“We did add to our faculty by doing that because we just didn’t have the technology,” Murdock said. “That would be several nights a week.”

Murdock avoided that particular program due to concerns many likely shared.

“I was afraid of small planes,” Murdock said. “I’m not now, the university pilots are absolutely magnificent and I would fly with them anywhere anytime.”

She may be retiring, but Murdock’s time at UW nor her research are ending. She will maintain an office on campus and will continue research she has yet to finish, while also helping her husband with work on class action suits.

Murdock is not the only faculty member retiring and with all that are, UW is taking a significant loss of experience.

“Somebody added it up and with the number of faculty leaving the university at this time about 1000 years of experience is walking out the door,” Murdock said.

Her experience will be especially missed. In her 42 years, Murdock has exemplified what an educator should be. She has facilitated the transition of an entire institution, provided advice and insight to countless students and has taught with passion and conviction. Her focus is and has always been on students.

“There are wonderful, bright, talented faculty, staff and administrators,” Murdock said. “I will always care about this university; it’s just time for other people to make the decisions. I looked at my husband and said, ‘I’m content.’”