Public forum graphic. Soleil de Zwart // AS Review
By Kiaya Wilson
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education [VPUE] finalists Sheila Webb and Jack Herring held virtual open forums on May 21 and May 22. Each forum consisted of a 10 to 15 minute presentation from the finalists and 30 minutes for questions from public viewers.
Finalists were given a statement to base their presentation on. Sara Wilson, senior director for student success initiatives and chair for this search, read the statement given to the finalists at the beginning of each forum.
“Ensuring the engagement and retention of students and addressing achievement gaps is central to Western’s mission of inclusive success,” Wilson said. “Some common challenges known to affect retention include access to courses and majors, financial constraints and lack of community and connectedness. What do you see to be the role of the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education in addressing these and other challenges that impact retention?”
Sheila Webb
Sheila Webb, journalism professor and chair of the Academic Coordinating Committee [ACC], held the first virtual open forum on May 21. Webb began with some personal background including her role and experience as the chair of the ACC.
“ACC is responsible for the quality of our curriculum and I have been serving on it for a number of years,” Webb said. “The ACC chair works closely with the VPUE in considerations of accreditation, assessment and instituting legislation that impacts our curriculum.”
Webb went on to discuss Western’s current retention rates, which are how many people stay at Western from their first to second year, what she believes Western does well and how she plans to help increase retention.
Webb said she believes the best way to increase retention is through student engagement. She explained her desire for increasing first-year experience programs, expanding engagement with transfer students and reframing general university requirements.
“For more than a decade, students, as individuals and through representative student groups, have requested that the curriculum ‘move into the 21st century,’” Webb said. “That it reflects new, more inclusive scholarship and that it feature previously unheard-from voices.”
Webb ended her presentation with her four main goals for the future.
Webb’s goals are to build on the success of first-year engagement programs via tracking and retention of transfer students, work to retain under-served students and to improve, develop and nurture programs that help them successfully complete their degrees, codify assessment to identify which outcomes are most effective and to accentuate those and finally, to address emergent issues raised by COVID-19 that may disadvantage under-served students and students with disabilities.
Wilson first asked Webb about her work with ethnic studies and students of color because of an incident where she excluded two students of color from working on a class assignment.
“This question concerns a very complicated event during spring 2019 about a Western Front story about an ACC meeting to address biased language in the classroom. As chair of the ACC, I was pleased to successfully shepherd a resolution that passed unanimously,” Webb said. “Both the concern and views of five students were thoroughly addressed at the time by faculty and administration and given the sensitive nature of the topic and privacy guidelines, I think it best not to say more.”
Students in Western’s journalism department submitted a story to the AS Review about this incident before the virtual forums. In this statement, students expressed their disapproval of the way Webb handled the situation and why they don’t believe she would be a good fit for the vice provost of undergraduate education.
Jack Herring
Jack Herring, department chair and dean of Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, held the second virtual open forum on May 22. Herring also began his presentation with some personal background and explained his role as the department chair and dean of Fairhaven College.
“When I arrived at Western, I actually came to Fairhaven college not knowing how amazing the undergraduate programs at Western were,” Herring said. “I really came because I was interested in Fairhaven college, which I saw, and still see, as a national model for progressive, seminar based student-centered education.”
Herring highlighted President Sabah Randhawa’s strategic plan and the push for increasing graduation rates. He addressed achievement rates on campus but said they are really institutional gaps because they are areas where the university isn’t meeting their goals on a systemic level.
Before going into his own ideas, Herring described his admiration for the current VPUE, Steven VanderStaay.
“[He’s] done an amazing job and leaves a huge set of shoes to fill,” Herring said. “So, as I make comments on this, I just want to say that I have a huge learning curve as I walk into this role, despite my extensive administrative experience, there are a lot of moving parts to the job and I will spend a lot of time listening as I move into this role.”
Herring discussed his admiration for a living-learning curriculum where administration can engage students through their living experiences along with their academic experiences.
“As VPUE, one of my early priorities would be to call to question on this and say ‘are we as a university going to adopt this well-proven strategy that might get us a significant chunk of the way in that good to great goal?’,” Herring said.
Herring said another one of his top priorities would be to move to action instead of compassion and one of the ways he wants to see that happen is by having faculty and staff that better reflect the student demographic. He also addressed how difficult that can be at an administrative level and a personal level.
“It’s not an easy road ahead for faculty of color, for example, to come to Bellingham and thrive at this historically white institution, that was built by white people for white people,” Herring said. “We have to structurally address that.”
Herring said he respects the work that Western has done for this but there is still a lot of work to do.
Most of the questions submitted to Wilson for this forum, concerned conflict resolution at various levels within this job. However, there was a question about Fairhaven students’ disapproval of Herring’s work as the dean of Fairhaven.
Herring highlighted an incident concerning Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies’s initiative to include an ethnic studies program.
“I screwed up in that process because I did not reach out to the Students for Ethnic Studies who had been in a leadership role and had their blood, sweat and tears in that effort and I dishonored that effort unintentionally,” Herring said. “With my own privilege and blindspots fully in place, I did not honor the work they had done by engaging in in that conversation before I led the faculty into endorsing that as a priority.”
Herring said he feels really bad about doing that and openly apologized during the virtual forum to the students that were affected by this. He also invited students who have been affected by this incident and other students who care about this to continue this conversation with him.
Each forum ended with the finalists being asked why they are the best fit for this position.
Webb and Herring both explained how their experiences have helped them to prepare for this role. Webb described her close work with the current VPUE through her work as the ACC chair which has given her an insider view of how to transfer into this position. Herring described his administrative work, but did say he will have a lot of learning to do in this role.
Herring was announced the new VPUE on June 8 in a Western Today article.
More information about vice provost for undergraduate education can be found on this website.