First Big Blue John Mortensen retires
A born and raised Aggie is retiring. John Mortensen is described as “very thoughtful, very professional” by Linda Zimmerman, executive director of the Utah State University Student Involvement and Leadership Center.
“He’s definitely student-centered,” she said.
As a faculty member, Mortensen has been over course enrollment and retention, the registrar, orientation and many other positions. As a student, he was involved in a variety of leadership positions and was the very first Big Blue.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and it’s changed a lot over the years, but this is home,” Mortensen said.
Mortensen was born in Logan and was the ninth of 11 siblings, many of whom still live in the valley. He attended Logan High School, where he was very involved and was the student body vice president.
His first year at USU, he mainly went to school and worked.
“In my first year of college, all I did was work and go to school, and it wasn’t that much fun. And then a few of my friends got me involved, so that, to me, was a turning point,” Mortensen said.
Mortensen’s involvement consisted of being the ASUSU, now known as USUSA, academic vice president and the athletic vice president. As the academic VP, he provided hard copies of teacher evaluations for students to go through to see which teacher they should or shouldn’t take.
During this time, registration was in the early years of being online. The USU faculty was hesitant to release their ability to sign students into classes.
“Students were frustrated because they could see which classes were open and the registration system had the capability of allowing students to register for open classes, but students could not do so without the instructor’s signature,” Mortensen said.
He was able to meet with various committees to “help them embrace and accept new technologies.” There is now a time period of registration where students can add or drop a class without faculty signatures.
According to Mortensen, his experiences as a student leader provided a background that helped shape his career path.
“Once I got involved with student government and other things, it’s like, then I loved college, just the experience, because I think you get just as much from your experience outside of the classroom as in the classroom,” Mortensen said.
During Mortensen’s time as the athletic VP, he was able to create the first vision of USU’s Big Blue.
“So back in the day, we had a live mascot. His name was Gus, which stood for ‘Go Utah State.’ We also had a radio station that covered all of our athletic sports, and they had a chicken. We called it the KVNU chicken,” Zimmerman said. “I don’t know whether anybody really thought about a mascot until [Mortensen].”
Mortensen was able to budget and raise $750 to have a costume shop in Salt Lake City create it for him, but this first version was royal blue, not navy blue.
“The first thing I thought is, ‘This looks like BYU.’ But it was a bull. It had real horns. It wasn’t the best-looking costume, but we had a mascot,” Mortensen said.
Mortensen was not trained to be the mascot Aggies see today. He would give high fives at games and other events and bring little energy compared to today’s Big Blue. Once his time as the athletic VP was done, Mortensen graduated and returned to USU for his master’s, leaving the suit stashed in a closet.
The idea of a mascot, at the time, did not seem important to the Spirit Squad coaches before Zimmerman, who became the Spirit Squad coach in 1988, when Mortensen was in his master’s program.
Zimmerman received a call from a man in Idaho expressing the need for a mascot. This was Kenn Solomon. He then transferred to USU and became the second Big Blue mascot.
“I think the stars just aligned for us, and then we’ve just taken off with it,” Zimmerman said. “Ken was very athletic, and so we were able to immediately incorporate him in our pyramids and different stunts that we did, so he also contributed to where we are with Big Blue today.”
Mortensen has been at USU consecutively since 1983. After he got his master‘s, he started to work for the university. His titles since then are as follows: part-time instructor in the Department of Business Information Systems and Education; assistant director of career services; assistant to the vice president for information and enrollment; director of advising and transition services; university registrar; assistant vice president for enrollment and retention; associate vice president of academic and instructional services; associate vice president for course management, analytics and strategy.
While Mortensen enjoys working with data and projects, he describes his “happiest year” as when he was “right in the middle of working with orientation, advising and working with the students that closely.”
According to Zimmerman, with them working together, she has seen this care for students firsthand.
“He always has the students in mind, so several things that the upper administration might be thinking of doing, [Mortensen] has brought back to the USUSA Executive Council to talk through and to get the students’ opinion, and I do think all of that stems from him being a student leader and understanding the student voice on campus,” Zimmerman said.
The student experience has a great level of importance to Mortensen.
“Having that history of student involvement, I’ve always tried to look at things from the student perspective and ‘How’s this going to impact them?’” Mortensen said.
After being at USU since 1983 and working for USU for the last 36 years, Mortensen’s career was aimed at caring and advocating for the students.
“None of us would have been here if it weren’t for the students. We’re here to do all we can do to help the student be successful. It’s not about us. It’s not about me. It’s not about the president. It’s about the students,” Mortensen said.