Tag: West Liberty

Final Four West Liberty Presidential Candidates To Visit Campus In Coming Weeks

West Liberty University announced its four final presidential candidates. They are expected to visit the university over the next few weeks for campus tours and interviews with faculty, staff and students. The university has been searching for a new president ever since the BOG voted last year not to extend the contract for former President W. Franklin Evans.

West Liberty University announced its four final presidential candidates. They are expected to visit the university over the next few weeks for campus tours and interviews with faculty, staff and students.

“I am pleased to announce that we have four strong candidates for the next president of West Liberty University. The Search Committee looks forward to introducing these leaders to our campus community and to the public as we begin the final steps in the extensive process of finding a president,” Thomas Cervone said in a press release. Cervone is the chairman of the Search Committee and an active alumnus and member of the West Liberty Board of Governors (BOG).

The four university presidential candidates are Tim Borchers, vice president for Academic Affairs at Peru State College; David Christiansen, chancellor of Penn State York; Kelly Ryan, interim chancellor of Indiana University Southeast; and Robert T. Smith, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at Valdosta State University.

There were 59 applications for president in total, according to the university.

Borchers has 18 years of higher education administrative experience. He holds a doctoral degree in communication from Wayne State University, a master’s degree in communication from Wayne State and a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Borchers is expected to visit campus April 19-21.

Chistiansen has overseen the development of more than 90 academic programs at Penn State. He co-chaired Penn State’s Enhanced Education Pathways committee, which created several programs to increase the enrollment, retention and graduation rates of first-generation and low-income students. He earned his bachelor’s degree in History and Latin from Texas Tech University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in Classics at the University of Wisconsin. 

Christiansen is expected to visit campus April 25-27.

Ryan became the eighth chancellor and fourth woman chancellor to serve Indiana University Southeast. She holds three degrees in history, a bachelor’s degree from George Mason University, a master’s degree from Boston College and a doctoral degree from the University of Maryland.

Ryan is expected to visit campus April 16-18.

Smith has focused his career on student success through expanding experiential learning opportunities, improving retention and graduation rates, particularly among underrepresented students. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in Mathematics from the University of Delaware, as well as bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and German from Widener College (now Widener University). More recently, Smith earned certificates from the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the Becoming a Provost Academy, sponsored by the American Academic Leadership Institute. 

Smith is expected to visit campus April 23-25.

West Liberty hopes to have a president on board sometime in late spring, with an expected date of contract to begin July 1, 2023.

Read detailed bios about each candidate on West Liberty’s website.

The university has been searching for a new president ever since the BOG voted last year not to extend the contract for former President W. Franklin Evans.

Evans’ two years at West Liberty were marked with controversy after he was accused by the school’s faculty senate of plagiarizing sections of his speeches. 

He admitted to at least one instance of failed accreditation, while national news publication Inside Higher Ed alleged that he failed to give proper attribution in several speeches.

“It was not my intent to give anyone the impression that those were my words,” Evans said in an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting last year. “I was just trying to provide a framework of knowledge, information that would help our students to be successful.”

In fall 2021, West Liberty’s BOG voted to publicly censure Evans following the allegations. In the spring of 2022, a survey of the school’s faculty was conducted, gauging their level of support for Evans since the censure. More than 80 percent of respondents to that survey disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, “I am confident in the integrity of President Evans.”

Evans had stated he felt the survey was unfair, claiming race played a role in his continued criticism. Evans was the school’s first Black president. 

A representative of the faculty senate, however, said the survey was intended to provide feedback to the president who had promised to rebuild trust with the campus community.

Cathy Monteroso has been interim president at West Liberty since December.

What is the Future for Higher Ed in West Virginia?

College tuition is going up across the country – and across West Virginia. Recently, the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission (WVHEPC) approved increases for several colleges and universities. Unfortunately, these increases come as many schools have seen a decline in enrollment.

On June 16, the WVHEPC approved  tuition increases. Here’s a look at the increases at each school:

  • Marshall University: 9.1% (School of Pharmacy only)
  • West Liberty University: 9.1% (Nursing program only)
  • West Virginia University: 7.8%
  • Fairmont State University: 6.6%
  • Concord University: 5%
  • Shepherd University: 4.96%

And as the cost of college continues to rise, the commission’s website says enrollment at universities across the state has dropped by over 2,500 in the past three years.

Is the rise in tuition to blame for this downward trend? A report finds that West Virginia is one of only eight states that continues to reduce the amount of money going towards higher education in its budget as the economy recovers from the Great Recession. For this year, there was a 3.75 percent reduction.

Kent Gamble is the Director of Enrollment at Concord University. He says the school had little choice when deciding to increase tuition.

“The cost of business keeps going up and up, whether it’s a gas bill or whether it’s [an] insurance bill, and so I think that the university has to make an adjustment,” Gamble says.

Concord is considered a regional university. In other words, it serves the counties that surround it. Regional universities are often some of the biggest employers in the areas they serve. Ideally, graduates from these universities can then go on to work in the state.

Gamble says that universities like Concord are vital to West Virginia’s recovery for this reason.

“We have a responsibility to drive the economy just like the mom and pop business does, or the larger employer in that county,” Gamble says. “So I think we have a responsibility to drive students to get a degree, to get a four-year education or a masters.

One way to avoid tuition increases is obvious – increase enrollment. But Gamble realizes that the old technique of attracting student right out of high school is not broad enough.

“I think that for any institution in West Virginia that’s small, diversifying its enrollment is going to be key to ten-year success, or five-year success, or one-year success,” Gamble says. “You can no longer rely on the first time freshman to drive enrollment. Even though it’s a big part of your enrollment, you can’t rely on it.”

WVHEPC Chancellor Paul Hill has high hopes for the future of higher education in West Virginia despite the declining state support. He says that there are positive signs of an economic upturn on the horizon.

“We think there is some optimism within the state budget in the long term while the state budget office indicates we’re still going through this downturn, there are some signs that the budget will recover in the next year or so and we would hope that there would not be any further cuts to higher education in West Virginia,” Hill says.

Hill and his team at the WVHEPC have made a master plan for increasing enrollment at West Virginia universities. Here’s a breakdown of the plan:

  1. Access: Increase access to postsecondary education for West Virginians.
  2. Success: Increase the amount of students graduating from universities in the state.
  3. Impact: Increase the amount of graduates from West Virginia universities who contribute to the state’s workforce after obtaining a degree.

Hill says the actual process of learning will change, having an impact on the future of higher education.
“I think [in] the future we’re going to see a lot more use of technology in our education, we’re already seeing a lot now,” Hill says. “But I think we’ll see a lot more in what we call ‘blended learning opportunities,’ more online opportunities.

And what about the actual college students? Why are they here? Jasmine Jimenez is from Connecticut and attends Concord University. She decided to attend college in West Virginia because of the lower costs.

Credit Jared Kline
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Jimenez works on campus to help pay for her education expenses.

  “The tuition increases are coming at every state, but it also has a lot to do with the cost of living and the poverty levels and what not in those states, and Connecticut versus West Virginia is always going to be cheaper,” Jimenez says.

But Jimenez also remembers some of the things that were discouraging her from attending college back in high school. For her, there seems to be a lack of coordination between the colleges and high schools.

“High school students are told that this is the price, this is how much it’s going to go up every year and that’s all they see,” Jimenez says. “They don’t do get any sort of encouragement that they could afford these schools and go to schools and they won’t have to be in debt.”

Despite the nearly annual tuition increases at its colleges, West Virginia continues to be a higher education bargain as in Jimenez’s case. And attracting more out-of-state students could be a key to increasing college enrollment because the state does not produce enough high school graduates each year to keep its college classrooms filled.

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