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As she embarked on her 40^th year on Southwestern Michigan College’s faculty, Professor of Social Science Dr. Mary D. Young-Marcks paused to reflect.

After high school in Saginaw with SMC’s 50^th commencement speaker, former state representative and Michigan budget director Al Pscholka, Young attended Delta College, for dental assisting. She waitressed fulltime while attending school, making it a point to take night class on Wednesdays to avoid “all-you-can-eat fish night.”

“I just hated (dental assisting),” Young-Marcks said. “But It wasn’t a mistake because it taught me what I didn’t want to do. With my science requirements out of the way, I took sociology, which I loved, history and political science and graduated in 1977 with an AA in liberal arts. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I took time off and traveled.”

The oldest of five also explored joining the Air Force. She had two sisters and two brothers, one of whom is deceased. One sister became an attorney and served in a prosecutor’s office. Her other sister has a business degree and lives in Saginaw. Her brother in Tennessee also has a retail background.

At Central Michigan University, she studied social work, and worked in that field after graduating in 1980. She might have minored in psychology, but balked at taking “rat lab,” so political science became her minor.  She added a master’s degree in public administration.

“I had a fulltime, paid internship with the city of Midland as an administrative assistant,” she said. “The economy wasn’t great when I graduated in 1983, so I applied for jobs in 49 of the 50 states,” except Hawaii, logging her search in a notebook.

A tragic death midyear had SMC scrambling for a replacement.

“My (SMC) hire date is easy to remember because it was the day after Super Bowl XVIII (Jan. 22, 1984, when the Los Angeles Raiders beat the Washington Redskins, 38-9, in Tampa.

“That’s relevant,” she said, “because my family used to have Super Bowl parties. Everybody dressed up as their favorite team. I was politically incorrect and put on war paint. It was bitter cold, and as Dr. (William) Spencer and I were talking (on Monday), he started looking at me weird. I had scrubbed my face, but the war paint hadn’t quite come off, and I don’t wear makeup. As I warmed up, sitting in his office” in the William P.D. O’Leary Building, the streaks became visible.

That’s how it came to be that Young-Marcks, who has lived in Niles and in Edwardsburg, started teaching American government at the collegiate level without ever teaching K-12 or part-time as an adjunct.

“I taught six sections with as many as 32 students,” or almost 200 a semester. “I didn’t know a soul when I moved down here, so I had no intention of spending my life here.”

She completed her Ph.D. from Michigan State University in college and university administration.

Despite her long tenure, including department chair, her career spans just two Board of Trustees chairmen, Dr. Fred L. Mathews and Thomas F. Jerdon, and four presidents, David C. Briegel, Dr. Marshall E. Bishop, Dr. David. M. Mathews and Dr. Joseph L. Odenwald. Physics Professor Andrew Dohm is a former student.

In 2019, when Young-Marcks received her 35-year service pin, President Mathews commented, “I met her when I came in the summer of 1997. As dean of arts and sciences, I got to know her as an absolutely caring and committed faculty member. Most people who devote their lives to education and teaching have a certain missionary zeal about them and care very deeply about helping other people to learn. She’s been a pillar of student success.”

Whether she attends mentoring dinners, athletic events or theatre productions, Young-Marcks said, “I think it’s important to show students that we’re here for them. Women, more than men, if they don’t have families, put all their energy into work. The college was much smaller when I came here. You knew everybody in the room, their spouses and their children.”

Teaching “online students, you don’t know them in person. One of the women who plays basketball was a really good student, so when I saw her basketball game, I could send her a note that I saw her play. We’ve still never actually met.”

Young-Marcks married for the first time at 55. Her husband, Michael, teaches Spanish at Edwardsburg High School.

“I chose not to get married young,” she said. “Getting married is easy. Staying married is a whole different ballgame. My parents had an excellent relationship. I wanted that kind of marriage, I wanted to have kids, but I also knew I wanted to travel and to go to school — ‘selfish’ things I could not do as a wife and a mom.”

Her mother was her traveling companion as they visited Germany, Scotland and England.

Given the traveling she did as a young woman, what are Young-Marck’s retirement plans?

“I intend to do more traveling. My husband’s retiring, too,” she said. “My dream cruise will take us around the British isles.”

Teaching government, keeping politics on TV

Entering her last academic year before retiring in August 2024, her January start date will give her 40 ½ years, eclipsing Kurt Erickson’s 40 years.

Young-Marcks instructs American government, social work policy, a courts class and EDU 120, Educational Exploration.

She is well-known as a political analyst through television appearances, but keeps partisan politics from seeping into her classroom.

“I don’t remember how it got started, but I’ve been doing it a long time,” Young-Marcks said of countless appearances on WNIT’s “Politically Speaking,” where legislators, reporters and academics share insights on developing policies and the political climate relevant to viewers in southwest Michigan and northern Indiana. The PBS station is based in South Bend.

“There are two bodies of thought when you teach intro to government,” Young-Marcks said. “One is to go in guns a-blazing and say, ‘I’m a Democrat’ or ‘I’m a Republican.’ Or, you’re apolitical in your presentation because you don’t want students to feel like they can’t say anything. I’ve gone that route, but I’m trying to get students engaged, so I say, ‘I’m not asking you to do anything I haven’t done,’ ” from working on campaigns to lobbying at the State Capitol and marching on Washington.

Thanks to work by her and Assistant Director of Campus Life Branden Pompey, SMC in 2021 was again nominated to Washington Monthly’s “Best Colleges for Student Voting Honor Roll,” repeating a feat also achieved in 2019.

Listen to people you don’t agree with

“Engagement is more than voting. And it doesn’t have to be politics. Get involved in your community. I encourage them to listen beyond sound bites for total context and to listen to people they don’t agree with.”

Young-Marcks belonged to The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan in Berrien County, which offered a spectrum of renowned speakers, from athletes Peyton Manning and Tim Tebow to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“I’ve seen both Bushes and Bill Clinton,” she said.

‘The world has changed’

Students have changed, “but to be fair to students, the world has changed,” she said. “With historical milestones like the JFK assassination, the Challenger explosion and 9/11, they don’t have the same experiences to be the same as we are. They’re going through different things. Everybody is a product of their environment.

For example, Young-Marcks still employs courtesy titles, like when a student asked if he could call her Mary.

“No,” she replied. “We’re not that close.” She reciprocates by similarly referring to superiors. “It was always Dr. Mathews. I never called him Fred. When Mr. Briegel retired, he said we could call him Dave, but I couldn’t do it.”

“I do believe in karma,” she said, “and that things work out the way they’re supposed to. I’ve had a really good life.”

“When he says, ‘I wish I’d met you sooner,’ that changes the whole trajectory of anybody’s life. If things had been in turmoil here and I’d gotten another job, I never would have met my husband.

“Life’s not fair, failure is not a bad thing and things happen for a reason. I never went hungry. I always had a job. I’ve had opportunities beyond the classroom, like chaperoning an SMC trip to Italy and Greece. I can’t think of too many people more blessed than I am.”