DeKALB – George Middlemist has taken on the role of vice president of Finance and Administration and chief financial officer at NIU. Middlemist spoke to the Northern Star about his journey to becoming chief financial officer and the goals he has for NIU. 

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR BACKGROUND?

“My parents were both college professors. So, I grew up in a college town in Oklahoma, Stillwater, Oklahoma. So, I’ve been around higher education since I was 11-ish. So, you know, I think that’s important, right? This explains a little bit about why I’m in higher education today, but it just has always been part of my life.“

“I come from Denver. I came to NIU not quite a year ago. It was actually almost a year ago today that I had been interviewed and was debating whether or not to take the position at NIU. I had been at a university in Denver, Metropolitan State University, for about 20, almost 27 years, it was a little over 26 years. And I’ve had multiple roles. I started as an accounting manager, and became the bursar for a little while, I was the controller for a while, I was even the interim chief information officer for about three years. And then interim athletic director for three months while they were looking for replacement, and then finally, the last six or seven years at Metro. I was the CFO. And I think that’s a little bit about my background.” 

WHAT ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU LIKE TO DO IN YOUR FREE TIME?

“I am really family-oriented; and so when I can, I try and be around my family. So my daughter is actually a comedian in Chicago; she does shows. And so at least once a month, if not a little bit more, I like to get over to Chicago to watch her perform. So I do that in my free time.”

“I love cooking, so I do that when I can in my free time. I’m an avid Denver Broncos fan, so the reason I was on the plane was I had flown to Denver, Friday so I can go to the Broncos game on Sunday, and then flew back this morning. So I’ve been a season ticket holder of the Denver Broncos for almost 30 years. I’ve seen two Super Bowls. One was a really amazing experience, but we lost. And one was an even more amazing experience where we won. And so those are kind of some of the things I did in my free time, spend a lot of time with my wife and my son, when I’m in Denver, when I can make friends and spend time with my daughter here in Chicago.”

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO PURSUE A CAREER IN FINANCE AND ULTIMATELY BECOME A CFO AT NIU?

“I always wanted to do something that was logical, right? It was kind of science and we have certain rules and things that you follow and come up with your conclusions. And so I looked in all the different majors that I could do and accounting, it seemed to be one where it was very similar even though it wasn’t science, very similar, right, where there was a lot of logic applied in that profession. So, I majored in accounting and then did the accounting thing for a few years. And as my wife had become pregnant and I realized I needed to focus on my career.”

“I became an auditor for the state of Colorado. But when I started at Metro, I figured I’d be there for two or three years because that was kind of what you did when you were young. You did a job for a few years, and then if you wanted a promotion, you look for that next job. But the pastor of the mission of Metro became a real passion of mine. So Metro is very similar to NIU where it serves a lot of students who are underserved. So students there for marginalized populations, students that have socio-economic challenges, Pell eligible students, first generation students, and if Metropolitan hadn’t been where it was, a lot of those individuals wouldn’t have been able to further their lives and their families’ lives, their communities. And so that actually became my passion, finance, which was my way of being able to get back to the university. I kind of fell into it, if that makes sense.”

WHAT PLANS DO YOU HAVE FOR THE UNIVERSITY IN THE NEXT YEAR? 

“I think my main plan is to really instill some financial discipline in the university. We have a deficit that we’re currently working to resolve, as a lot of universities, not just in Illinois but around the country, are struggling with how we have closed some of our gaps between the revenues and the expenses. And so this next year, we want to close that deficit by about half.” 

WHAT ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS AND LONG TERM?

“For the next five years, completely eliminated the deficit, and actually began to build us, you know, a surplus in our budget.”

WHERE IS THE UNIVERSITY STRONG FINANCIALLY?

“So the University has actually been in pretty good financial position. We do have a deficit, but we have some strong cash balances, we have a lot of assets. And so when you look at kind of the financial information I look at, which is about ratios, like the current ratio and the CFI some of those things, we actually have a pretty strong foundation, we just need to build on that.”

HOW DO YOU BALANCE THE FINANCIAL NEEDS OF THE UNIVERSITY WITH MAINTAINING AFFORDABILITY FOR STUDENTS AND ENSURING ACCESSIBILITY TO EDUCATION?

“You know, I think that every decision that you do, you have to model what that looks like for your students. And so when we talk about affordability and NIU is actually fairly affordable and pretty good access. We haven’t had a tuition increase, and we’ve had two in the last seven years, and so we really try to maintain that promise. We’ve also really developed strong institutional scholarship programs for our students.”

“But I think that as you look forward into the future, if you’re considering something that might increase the cost for students, so increasing your tuition or increasing your fees, we’ve also got to balance that with making sure that those students that are especially impacted by those increases, and other means to be able to access aid. So when I said I mean institutional where I came from Metro, anytime we had a tuition increase, we would look at our students in the different EFC. So that’s expected family contribution, and set aside enough aid, so those students that were in EFC of less than $2,400 would have enough institutional aid to have no increase in their net tuition and fees”

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT READERS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT YOU?

“I have a passion for serving students, and so I think that the readers would probably like to know that. I have a passion for the types of students at NIU, serve students that come from marginalized communities that are Pell eligible that are first generation, because I think that higher education is the way to begin to balance some of the some of the challenges that we have as a society.” 

“When we give young people and non-traditional students alike the benefit of a degree in higher education, they’re able to give back to their communities, their families in ways that they could never have done without that degree. And that doesn’t just mean money, but also being able to problem solve different problems that we have. There are lots of solutions, but the most important thing is to identify the problems and be different about solutions.”