Michael Fortner leads a double life — as an assistant NIU physics professor and the new mayor of West Chicago.

“The two jobs definitely keep me very busy, and I don’t have a lot of free time,” Fortner said.

Fortner defeated two opponents, including a two-term incumbent, to take office April 16, and describes his position in the DuPage County suburb as so far “very interesting.” Things might have been harder before the days of the computer and cell phone, he said, but new technologies make it possible for Fortner to manage both jobs, especially because his mayoral role is only part time.

“The mayor’s job is primarily to direct policy, to be leader of the city council and to interact with other politicians in neighboring communities,” Fortner said. “The mayor’s role is not to direct daily policy — that’s not the way we are set up in West Chicago.”

Fortner is no stranger to West Chicago politics, having been involved in different city commissions for many years and serving two terms as an alderman. He initially got into politics when he bought a 100-year-old house in West Chicago and found that the city was looking for someone to serve on a historical commission.

Fortner spent 1990-1991 creating a historic district for the city because he lived about two blocks from a historic neighborhood that he said was run down and neglected. During his participation with the commission, he learned about West Chicago’s zoning problems, which made it difficult to restore the neighborhood properly. That led to him filling a vacancy on the planning commission. Eventually, he felt comfortable running for mayor.

“A lot of people get involved for one issue or another, and they’ll focus on that issue, but they’re not used to looking at how things break down and looking at the problem one step at a time,” he said. “Everyone brings different strengths — we have some people serving in the city who bring a business background and know what will help businesses, but one of the strengths that I can bring is the ability to ferret out the facts, figure out what’s going on and break down problems.”

At NIU, Fortner’s job as assistant professor requires him to do research professionally. One of the things he teaches in his physics courses is to break a problem into parts and work on each section to get the solution — and applies the same concept to city politics, where officials sometimes are too eager for a quick fix, he said.

“There’s some synergy between my background and the demands of the job as mayor,” he said.

Fortner’s mayoral campaign took place this spring semester — a challenge because he also had to teach NIU classes, including laboratory electronics and Newtonian mechanics. On Saturdays and Sundays from January until the week before the election, he talked to West Chicago residents to hear their views and share his intentions for the job.

Fortner holds a doctorate in physics from Brandeis University, located in suburban Boston. He came to NIU for an opportunity in particle physics and because of its closeness to Fermilab, an accelerator laboratory run by the U.S. Department of Energy in Batavia.

Fermilab boasts the world’s most powerful accelerator, colliding protons and anti-protons and provides scientists with insight into what rules govern matter at its smallest scale.

“The accelerator that I work on is about the size of a four-story building,” Fortner said. “Over 50 institutions and about 500 physicists work on the experiments.”

So much data is generated that a person would need 10 million floppy disks every second to save all of the data, Fortner said. NIU professors involved in the experiment received grants from the National Science Foundation to participate in the project.

“The program here at NIU is wonderful, and we’ve done a lot of work. We began a doctorate program last fall and have had a masters program for many years,” Fortner said. “Our program has been rated as one of the most cost-effective masters programs for physics in the country and is also very flexible for students who transfer to Northern.”

This summer, Fortner will teach a mechanics course for graduate students, along with statistical mechanics, which involves the behavior of large particle groups. He typically teaches two classes per semester and two graduate courses during the summer.