Mark Lubkowitz has been a biology professor at St. Michael’s College for over 25 years. He is an avid cyclist, whitewater kayaker, and skate skier and loves to travel and adventure around the world with his family. Recently, he was awarded the Dr. Dave Landers Faculty Mentor Award for his support and dedication to student-athletes at St. Michael’s, specifically the Nordic Ski team, which he has been the faculty affiliate for since 2016.
Defender: Congratulations on your recent award. What does winning an award like this one mean to you?
Mark Lubkowitz: It meant a lot. I strive to be able to say that when my life is coming to the zenith, that my one wild ride of the merry-go-round mattered. Professionally, I want to be able to say that I made small incremental contributions to young people’s development and helped them become the people they want to be. And helped them to become interesting and curious people that strive to make the world a slightly better place. That’s quite literally why I come to work. I also look at it as if this person was my child, how would I want them treated? Over time, you plant lots of seeds and some of them really flourish. I’m particularly close to this team too, so it felt really good.
In what ways have you been involved with the Nordic Ski team?
I’ve been involved at many levels. The key in life is don’t ever stop exercising. So, I just never stopped. I swam in college and then I just kept going and it’s worked out in my favor. When I got here, I was like “I’m going to start a new sport.” Every sport that I did in my youth, I could only get worse at. I picked up skiing in my 40s, so I can always get better at that one. So, I ski with the team in the morning and go to their practices. That’s an exaggeration. I watch them ski past me over and over again and I shout words of encouragement. I’ll go to the races if they are in Vermont or maybe Lake Placid. I have the team over for dinner. I have my famous pizza oven and I make pizzas and hand them out at the races. And then, I just follow what they do. I try to be engaged with each athlete not just as an athlete, but as a person. It’s easy to see a person in one context and then forget that they are this complete story, most of which you will never know. It’s been really rewarding. Receiving the Dave Landers award made me feel like I was part of something larger than just being on the sideline. And making pizzas.
What advice would you give to student athletes at St. Michael’s who may be concerned with a school sports balance?
I talked to a lot of athletes, and many say that they’re better students in season than out of season. When you’re stressed out, when you’re unhappy, when you’re struggling emotionally, almost always, you’re out of routine. The body and mind like routine. That was true for me, too. I was at my best academically, in season, and at my worst out of season. The greatest skill you can ever develop is self-reflection. When things aren’t going well, you should ask yourself, “why?” and then ask yourself where you have agency and how you can change it. You have to take initiative and create your own structure when it’s not imposed upon you.
Do you see a connection between what you teach and your own personal life?
There’s no doubt that my life is richer because I interact with 18- to 22-year-olds for 25 years now. I’ve had thousands of students from life experiences and backgrounds that were different than mine. How students end up in your classroom and how they came here, it’s just fascinating. We’re all complete people with rich lives, and you can only ever know a sliver of it, especially in the classroom context. So that really just reinforced that people are complex.
You mentioned earlier that you bike to school every day. Could you tell me more about that? Do you do it in the cold Vermont winters too?
I usually stop right around the first week of December. In the fall, I’ll usually ride until it’s about 23 degrees and light snow but somehow it’s always harder for me to start back up in the spring. In the fall, I’m in great biking shape and I can get here in an hour and 15 minutes. Today, it was an hour and 45 minutes.
Wow, that’s really far.
It’s 43 miles round trip. Yeah, it’s not close.
What made you start doing that?
Exercise has always been really important to me. When the kids were young, I felt like I had no work-life balance. Then I realized that it was only a half hour more to bike rather than drive. Once I did that calculation, I was like “alright, that’s what I’m going to do.” Then as I got older and slower, I started venturing on a bike. Have you heard of bike packing?
I’m guessing it’s like backpacking, but on bikes?
Exactly. I did a 1,000 mile ride across the Continental Divide with 14 pounds of gear. I lived on a bike for a month with one of my kids. That’s where I got chased by grizzly bears.
Woah. Can I hear the grizzly bear story?
So, there’s this ride called the Tour Divide, which goes from Banff to Mexico. It’s the largest mountain bike trail system in the world, 2,700 miles. My son was turning 16 so he and I were going to take a month off and come out here and just see how far we can get. It was glorious. We did take a bear class online because you’re going through pretty big grizzly country. We were in Swan River Valley which is south of Glacier National Park. My son takes off sprinting up this dirt trail and there’s a log in the middle of the trail. All of a sudden, that log stands up, and I was like, well, that’s a cute little teddy bear. Then I was like, oh my god, that’s a grizzly cub.
Uh oh.
Yeah, uh oh. Then the cub ran off, though. After that, we saw a black bear standing up in the middle of the dirt road. Then it took off running, which was weird. Then as we came down the hill, we realized that the black bear was looking at a grizzly bear the entire time. So, at this point, we’ve trapped the grizzly bear between the river and us. You aren’t supposed to run, so we put down our bike and got out our bear spray. It would do these false charges at us where it would turn, charge, and then stop. This went on for like 20 minutes to where I thought, “how does this end?” Then the bear wandered into the brambles, which is common. They hide and then come back out. After seven minutes of waiting for us, the bear just comes running out. At this point, an SUV comes by and the guy rolls down his window and goes “You do know that’s a grizzly bear, don’t you?” Like, oh yeah, we’re well aware. So, he then put his truck between us and the bear and that’s how we got by it. By this point, my 15-year-old was crying, and I was literally in my head saying, when the bear comes, I will save the child.
Have you done a lot of other trips with your sons and family?
Kids have a remarkable capacity to suffer if they don’t know they’re suffering. So, when my youngest was 11, I took him on a 100-mile overnight bike ride. I let him carry his sleeping bag and set the pace. We stopped at every gas station and got candy along the way, but he rode that many miles on a mountain bike as an 11-year-old. So, we adventure a lot. Our family motto is ‘extend kindness, seek adventure.’ That’s how we raise our kids. Every year for Christmas, everyone gets t-shirts and bumper stickers with family mottos on them. N+1 is another one. So, what’s the family expectation, N, then plus one. You always do more than the expectation.
If someone were to follow you around for a day, what would surprise them the most?
Students would say, and I think it’s true; the dial goes to 10, but mine goes to 11, and it got stuck there. But at the end of the day, I go 11 to zero instantly. Battery’s gone, boom. I’m very open about my life because I find it to be a good teaching tool. People remember things better with narrative. Even with biology, I always start off with these narratives. After you’ve been in my class, you know to be taking notes, like this is heading somewhere. It sounds like a misadventure of being chased by a grizzly bear, but it’s going to end in molecular interaction.
Is there any moment from your career that captures why you love this profession?
There is. I have a friend, Carol Chodroff, who worked at the Delancey Street in San Francisco. Delancey Street will take you in when you’re first released from prison. They give you a car, a wardrobe, first and last month’s rent, and you have to apprentice in five different businesses. Carol was then hired to create a Delancey Street for incarcerated kids. She got to choose like 100 kids that had been imprisoned. These were not just at-risk kids, like they were way over the line. So, then you try to create an experience for them that will let them reintegrate into society and give them some scaffolding.
So, Carol is a kayaker, and we were sitting one day waiting for our ride and I was like “Carol, every day you go to work, the world is a little bit better place.” That’s what I want to be able to say. That was the goal. That was the whole thing. I was working in crops at the time, but I knew that it needed to be something that was more tangible for me.
That’s amazing.
Yeah, you know, years ago I was telling stories in class, and I said something about how I only have one friend of mine who is still living the dream, and the rest of us have moved on to whatever. Afterwards, a student pulled me to the side and he goes, “I don’t know why you said that because when I look at you, I think you are living your dream.” I have to admit, I had never really thought about it like that. When you’re caught short, it’s a chance to reflect, so that’s when I realized, oh yeah, this is where I belong. I am living my dream.
