Chad Baldwin, VP of Marketing and Communications for the University of Wyoming, called into the Weekday Wake-Up on Wednesday, November 19 for his monthly report. Baldwin discussed his recent recruiting trip to New York and the growing relationship with the Buffalo Bills, the upcoming jersey retirement for Josh Allen, a coal char study and the search for UW’s next president.

(0:00) Joining me live over the phone right now is Chad Baldwin with the University of Wyoming for (0:04) the Monthly Report from UW. Chad, good morning. How’s Laramie today? (0:10) Good morning, Duke.

It’s beautiful. We’re doing great and thanks for the opportunity. (0:14) Absolutely.

Well, I was of course in Laramie with the SBI crew over the weekend covering (0:18) state football and my first chance to see the new digs at War Memorial Stadium, (0:23) the press box and the seating. Everything looked really, really nice. It was very well done.

(0:30) Well, that’s great, Duke. I’m glad you liked it. I hope all the Braves fans enjoyed coming again (0:36) and seeing their team, of course, win.

I did my best to line up the weather for this year and (0:41) I think it worked out pretty well from what I could see. (0:44) Yes. If you’re the person we think, we’ll give it to you, man.

The weather was incredible. Yeah, (0:49) I can’t beat it. So as far as War Memorial goes, the stadium, are improvements done for now? (0:55) There’s nothing currently in the schedule moving forward right now, correct? (0:59) That’s correct.

Yep. We feel like we’ve really made a very significant upgrade now that (1:03) puts us in the place where we need to be to move forward in this crazy college (1:09) athletics landscape that’s out there. (1:11) Yeah.

Now, of course, you were able to join us in Laramie for state football because, (1:17) well, by golly, it sounds like you were in Buffalo and that relationship between the (1:21) University of Wyoming and the Buffalo Bills continues to develop. Tell us how things went (1:26) there. (1:27) Yeah, I appreciate it, Duke.

I was kind of bummed I didn’t get to see the football (1:31) championships here in Laramie, but we had a wonderful time in western New York. It’s about (1:38) 1500 miles away from here when talking about geography, Duke, but culturally, it feels a (1:45) lot like Wyoming. Really wonderful, nice people.

The weather was actually a little nicer in (1:51) Laramie than it was in Buffalo when we were there. Let’s just say they get their share of (1:56) the wind there off of Lake Erie as well, but had a great experience. Touched base with (2:03) a whole bunch of people.

We feel like we made a bit of a splash in western New York. People (2:09) already had some, because their superstar is a UW product, they’re aware of us, but (2:16) now I think they have a deeper understanding of what we’re all about, and we feel like (2:21) we got a chance to maybe get some more students from that part of the country. (2:24) Absolutely, and of course, that’s kind of the end goal, right? And as you and I talked (2:29) last time, you are seeing a little bit of a bump in enrollment at the university, is that correct? (2:33) Yeah, two straight semesters where we’re up from the year before Duke, and since COVID, (2:39) that’s a first for us, and we’re really excited about, you know, we’ve got a little momentum (2:44) going.

And this day and age, that’s a pretty big deal for higher ed. And so, you know, this (2:51) Buffalo Bills partnership was about two things, brand awareness, and then trying to create (2:56) some student recruiting pipelines. We know on the brand awareness front, we made some (3:01) big strides, and we’re going to find out now about the recruiting side here in the coming (3:05) months.

It might take us some time. I mean, you don’t just suddenly create a recruiting (3:10) pipeline out of nowhere. It does take some time to build it, but we had some really good (3:15) contacts there, and just a lot of fun in that community, which, by the way, they (3:21) love their Wyoming people coming there.

And by the way, there were some Star Valley folks (3:25) there that I had a good visit with while we were out there. (3:29) Fantastic. Love it.

And of course, a lot of Wyoming fans really excited for the (3:33) upcoming Jersey retirement with Josh Allen back in Laramie for the first time since he, (3:39) well, it’s been a while, right? And so that’s coming right up. (3:42) Yeah. Yeah, since he was drafted, essentially, and he’s had a pretty dang busy life since then.

(3:47) But we’re giving him an honor that we’ve never given anybody else in terms of as far as our (3:53) football program goes. And that stadium is going to be packed on Saturday. There will be some (4:02) national eyes watching there.

The Bills organization, I know, is sending some people out. (4:08) I think we’re really looking forward to having Josh back in the stadium where he cut his teeth. (4:13) That’s the place where he kind of perfected his trade.

And lots of great memories there from (4:22) beating Boise State to slugging it out there with CSU in the snow. And it’s going to be awesome. (4:30) Speaking with Chad Baldwin this morning about the report from the University of Wyoming.

(4:34) Well, looking at the future of the university, Chad, it sounds like (4:37) the search for the next president has officially begun earlier this month. (4:41) Yeah, that’s right. We’re now at the stage where the search firm that we’ve hired and (4:48) the search committee is lined up that people are applying for or being nominated for the position.

(4:55) And so that’s the stage where it now is taking applications from folks. (5:00) The search committee will reconvene, I think, in early December to kind of take an initial look (5:05) and then when the new year comes, when the committee will get to work, start doing some (5:13) interviews and pass along some finalists to the board of trustees for them to take and run with. (5:19) Excellent.

So that’s currently underway at the campus of UW. Also, on the research side of (5:26) things and what’s happening academically, anytime we see the word coal, right, we kind of perk our (5:31) ears up a little bit. Tell us about this new research that highlights the benefits of coal (5:36) char for sugar beet production.

First off, start off with what is coal char and then how did this (5:43) survey come about and what are the results? Sure. So, Duke, you know, our school of energy (5:48) resources is one of the real leaders in the world at trying to find uses for coal. We got a lot of (5:55) it.

We’re the biggest coal producer in the country and it’s kind of interesting to think about. (5:59) It can be used as a soil amendment for growing of crops. So this is Powder River Basin (6:06) coal.

Coal char is, I can’t give you all the process, but it’s, you know, it’s basically (6:15) coal that’s, I think, been burned to some degree. I could be scientifically off base here, but it’s (6:22) basically Powder River Basin coal that’s ground up and it’s used as a kind of a fertilizer. (6:28) And they tried it with sugar beet and the results are encouraging so far.

So, (6:35) yet another potential use for Wyoming coal to help, you know, grow crops. (6:42) Going from underground to the stars, this is pretty amazing. A pretty powerful microscope, (6:48) it sounds like, is going to be heading to the UW campus.

(6:52) Yeah, yeah. We have some world-class researchers here. We have Dr. Eunsun Park.

She got $1.3 (7:01) million from the National Science Foundation and it’s going to fund, and I can’t get, it’s a Leica (7:08) Stellaris 8 Falcon microscope. So it’s a state-of-the-art imaging platform that’s going (7:15) to give us an amazing ability to be able to view things in detail under a microscope. Now, (7:22) the thing that’s cool about this is, in this region, we’re the only game in town on this thing.

(7:27) And so, it’s going to be housed in our new science initiative building, (7:31) cutting-edge research for the biological and physical sciences, and make us a regional hub (7:36) where there are going to be researchers from other places coming here to use this amazing (7:41) instrument. And we got a number of things like this, but this is a new one that’s going to be (7:46) added to our arsenal. Well, Chad, as always, we appreciate your time.

Thank you for the updates (7:50) from the campus of UW. I think we closed things out with the city of Laramie and actually Wallet (7:57) Hub naming Laramie one of the best small-town college towns in the nation, correct? (8:04) Yeah, yeah. I think everybody’s heard of Wallet Hub.

They rank college towns based upon things (8:10) like safety and outdoor activities and cost of living and job opportunities, that kind of thing. (8:19) And the only small college towns that rank above us are like West Lafayette, Indiana and Charlottesville, (8:27) Virginia, Ann Arbor, Michigan. That one, I guess, Berkeley, California got listed above us.

But (8:31) in the Rocky Mountain West, we’re the number one. And when you go out to a place like, say, (8:37) at Western New York, you can go out there with pride and say, hey, folks, you want to have a (8:45) real quality education in a great, small kind of town setting. Laramie is right up there (8:53) among the very best in the country.

It’s one of the, it’s like, (9:01) there’s so much more to your college experience than just what you do in the classroom or in the (9:06) You want to find a community that fits where you can have a lot of fun. (9:11) And Laramie is that for sure. (9:14) Chad Baldwin, Marketing and Communications with the University of Wyoming.

Chad, (9:18) it’s been a pleasure as always. Thank you so much. We’ll touch base again next month.

(9:21) Sounds great, Duke. Thank you. (9:23) Weekday wake up this morning on the SBI Radio Network.