2025 President's State of the University Address

Good morning, everyone.

Uzma and I extend our warmest greetings and heartfelt welcome to each and every one of you.  Thank you for being here. It is important that we come together to mark both the start of a new academic year and to reflect on where we’ve been, where we’re going, and what it will take to get there.

Let me start my reflections on last year by acknowledging how grateful I am for the work you do and the commitment you bring to make Western an outstanding university.

I am grateful for our excellent faculty who continue to provide great education. Our faculty engage in important research and scholarship—whether it’s translating a de Chirico novel, exploring the impact of global warming, advancing clean energy solutions, assessing the intersections of technology and ethics, or preparing the next generation of educators—that have long-lasting impact on our communities and in our state. They actively engage students in their research, making the Western education so unique and impactful.

I am equally grateful for our remarkable staff, whose dedication makes Western such a vibrant and supportive community. From guiding students through every step of their journey to ensuring our campus runs smoothly each day, their commitment and care are felt everywhere. Their work truly enables our students and faculty to thrive.

This past academic year we graduated 3,258 students, including awarding approximately 240 graduate degrees and approximately 1,200 degrees in state-designated high demand areas. Last fall, we welcomed another first-year cohort of close to 3,100 students, with a total fall enrollment of 14,710 students, compared to 14,651 the previous fall.  

Our students continue to outperform their peers as recipients of prestigious scholarships and in pursuit of graduate degrees. They inspire us with their drive and creativity.  And, as I visit with our alumni, I am constantly impressed with how Western graduates are shaping lives and communities across the state and beyond, in business, public service, education, the arts, and so much more.  

I deeply appreciate your dedication to our mission. Thank you for the contributions each of you make to ensure Western continues to serve our region and our state.

Your contributions are even more impressive when we examine the context for the past twelve months. In my state of the university comments at the beginning of last academic year, I talked about the structural budget deficit and the importance of financial stability and managing expenses. The last year has tested us. The financial challenges we faced were real and significant. To ensure Western’s long-term stability, we needed to make choices that are painful in the short term. Difficult decisions were necessary to protect the integrity of our academic mission and to focus on what matters most: our students. We’ve reorganized systems, eliminated positions, and reallocated resources. These choices were not made lightly, and they came at a real human cost. We’ve said goodbye to valued colleagues—members of our community who have given so much to our university. I want to acknowledge the pain, stress, and uncertainty this created for those directly impacted, and for all of you who care about them.

It is also helpful to keep the national higher education landscape in perspective. While the challenges we’ve faced at Western are real, they are also not unique.

What we’re experiencing here mirrors what’s happening across the higher education landscape in Washington and across the country. Enrollment headwinds, funding shortfalls, shifting student needs, changes to federal regulations and research funding, and post-pandemic pressures are impacting colleges and universities of every type. The state government is facing difficult budget environments of its own, which makes institutional resilience and strategic focus more important than ever. At Western, we’ve felt this directly through significant reductions to our base state operating budget, as well as cuts to federal grant funding that have impacted faculty research, student opportunities, and our ability to advance mission-driven work across the region.

We are not alone in this. But we are responsible for how we respond.

At Western, we’ve chosen to respond with purpose, urgency and integrity. 

Our campus community has weathered an extraordinary amount of change in a short period of time. That’s not easy — and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. I want to recognize and sincerely thank our faculty, staff, and students for their resilience, their adaptability, and their continued commitment to our mission through a period of uncertainty. Your dedication and understanding has made it possible for us to move forward — not by standing still, but by acting decisively.

We’ve aligned our resources toward the classroom, the lab, the studio, the advising office— where the student experience is shaped every day. The majority of the positions we’ve eliminated have been administrative. Led by Provost Johnson, Academic Affairs has worked hard on aligning academic offerings and shifting instructional resources. We’ve worked intentionally to preserve academic programs and student-facing services, even as we’ve reduced our overall expenditures.

This work has been hard. At the same time, it is important to remember that budget reductions do not define us. What defines us is our shared commitment to our students, our scholarship, and our service to our state. Our budget work has, however, created the opportunity to double down on our priorities: to stay true to our mission, to keep students at the center, and to adapt in ways that expand access, not restrict it.

I want to directly address the concerns that have been expressed about the future of student support services as a result of the transition away from Student Affairs as a separate administrative division. Let me be clear: our commitment to student support remains strong and will not change. All of the student support services will continue without interruption. In fact, we expect to leverage and increase the effectiveness of some of those services through closer alignment with like programs within Academic Affairs and other areas across the university.

Looking ahead, our intent is to avoid any further layoffs this year. And as we enter the next legislative session, we will continue to fight vigorously against any further cuts to university funding. Protecting our people and preserving the strength of our mission remain our highest priorities. Rather, our focus will be on increasing revenue to offset reductions and invest in the future.

That commitment is what brings me to the most important efforts we’ll undertake this year: The Presidential Strategic Enrollment Growth Initiative.

For Western to thrive and to continue delivering on its public mission, we must grow. Not just in size, but in reach, in impact, and in relevance to the communities we serve.

Our goal for this year is ambitious but necessary: To welcome in fall 2026 a new entering class of 3,200 first-year students and 1,200 transfer students.

This goal is about opening the doors of Western to more students who deserve the chance to learn, grow, and lead. It’s about ensuring that the promise of public higher education remains real and reachable, especially for students who have historically been underserved by our systems.

Growing enrollments also ensures the long-term financial health of the university. Focusing exclusively on cost reduction creates a perpetual downward spiral for institutions; purposefully and thoughtfully growing enrollments—a journey we started pre-pandemic—will enable revenue growth to ensure that we sustain and deliver Western’s high-quality education to citizens of the state and beyond.

Our Enrollment Initiative rests on three key strategies working together:

• First, a Guaranteed Admissions Pilot that will provide automatic offers of admission to high school seniors in Whatcom, Skagit, Island, San Juan, and Snohomish counties who meet GPA and course requirements—removing barriers and simplifying the path to college for thousands of Washington students.
• Second, guaranteed transfer admissions for students at community and technical colleges across our region that will make it easier to transition from a two-year to a four-year degree without losing time or credits.
• And third, a bold and collective effort to expand how we recruit and welcome students to Western. This means showcasing our academic excellence and student experience more boldly, through a new marketing campaign. It means increasing philanthropic support for scholarships and financial needs—because affordability continues to be the biggest barrier students face. And it means engaging the full university community in creating a welcoming, inclusive experience for prospective students and families.

It will take all of us — faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners — to meet this moment. We will be sharing several new activities for faculty, staff and alumni to actively engage in the enrollment growth initiative.  

We’re also taking action behind the scenes:

• We’re redesigning the admissions experience to be mobile-friendly, intuitive, and supportive—with live chat tools, clearer financial aid information, and communications that meet students and families where they are.
• We’re engaging in more targeted outreach efforts to low-income Washington students who can access Western tuition-free thanks to the Washington College Grant and federal Pell Grant.
• We’re aggressively working to grow philanthropic support for scholarships and financial aid, making college more affordable and reducing cost as a barrier to enrollment and persistence.
• And across the university, we are aligning every area—from advising to housing to academic programming—around a shared goal: attracting students, supporting them, and helping them succeed.

We look forward to your active engagement. Because we cannot succeed unless we succeed together.

And growth doesn’t stop at enrollment. It only matters if students who come to Western stay, thrive, and graduate.

That’s why I’ve asked Dr. Jacqueline Hughes, our Chief Diversity Officer, to lead a university-wide effort on community and belonging with a focus to increase student retention.

We know that success in college isn’t just academic. It’s emotional, social, and cultural. Students need to feel seen, supported, and part of something larger than themselves. They need to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, in leadership, and throughout the campus community. And they need clear pathways into Western, through their time here and beyond, as they go on to make their mark in the world.

Dr. Hughes will lead this work in partnership with units across the university. Her focus is to align our efforts from mentoring programs and identity-based supports to community engagement and staff development.  Her goal is clear: to ensure that every Western student not only finds a place here but feels like they belong and they are supported in their journey. This work will be a central part of how we live out our mission in the months and years ahead.

As we undertake this work, Provost Johnson and I are especially looking forward to continued collaboration with the Faculty Senate and its leadership. Shared governance is critical to the health of any university, and we’re grateful for the spirit of engagement and partnership we’ve already experienced.

We’ve greatly appreciated our early conversations with Faculty Senate President Erika McPhee Shaw and Vice President James Ray over the summer, and we look forward to building on those conversations in the months ahead as we collectively address the challenges and opportunities in front of us.

We are also deeply appreciative of the strong collaboration with our Professional Staff Organization, as well as with our labor partners—PSE, UFWW, WFSE, and WAWU. These partnerships are essential to Western’s success.

And while our strategic enrollment initiative is central to our work ahead this year, I would be remiss not to mention a few other activities important to our collective work. We continue to closely follow the federal directives related to research funding and the broader education environment, assessing their impact on our operations, and supporting our community as we navigate this continuing uncertain environment.  

While the state legislative session last year was quite challenging, I am encouraged that our advocacy on per student funding helped elevate a more intentional dialogue on the state’s higher education funding model and, more specifically, Western’s position in it. We will continue to impress upon the legislature the importance of higher education to the future of our state’s economy and the need for a more sustainable higher education system, including a funding model that effectively addresses issues like per student funding and funding-split for compensation increases.

Several new infrastructure projects remain on track. The Kaiser-Borsari Hall, the new home for Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Energy Systems, opened its doors in January 2025. The House of Healing Longhouse will open later this academic year, and we are in the design phase for the new Student Development and Success Center near the flag plaza on the south end of campus that will serve as the gateway and welcome center to campus, housing admissions and other student support services. We received funding this year from the State’s Climate Commitment Account to convert the campus steam-powered heating system with a more energy-efficient system that will decrease Western’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by at least  86%. We are also working with Olympic College and legislative leaders on long-term infrastructure needs on the Peninsulas.

Finally, we are in advanced conversations with several donors to help jump start growth opportunities for the university, beyond scholarships and financial support for students. Given the state revenue picture, we cannot rely on state funding for exploring new, creative, and growth-oriented activities. These conversations, for example, have included looking at new and expanded opportunities for programs in health sciences and performing arts. Planning and design of such academic activities will be led by Provost Johnson and Academic Affairs once the work with donors has matured to the funding stage.  

We’ve come through a difficult year. There has been an enormous amount of change at Western over the past few years, and that for an institution where change in the past has been much more gradual over a longer period. And there may be more change ahead; the world we live in is also changing much more rapidly than it has in the past. Yet, I believe Western Washington University remains a place of purpose, where students not only earn a degree, but also discover themselves and their community and their capacity to make a difference. In our faculty and staff, I see commitment, I see pride in this place, and I see a belief in its mission.

Western is still Western.

Still rooted in care. 

Still powered by curiosity. 

Still defined by the creativity, resilience, and heart of the people who make up this community.

Before I wrap up, I’d like to encourage all of you to join us on Monday morning at 10 AM in Carver Gym for student Convocation. We’ve changed the ceremony to be a bit more lively this year. We’d love to see as many faculty and staff there as possible to help welcome our new students. And, on your way out today, be sure to grab a WWU tee shirt—compliments of the Foundation for WWU and Alumni—that perhaps you can wear at the student convocation to show our university spirit.

In closing, as we begin this new academic year, I invite each of you to lean into the hard work, yes, but also to the opportunity of expanding access and success and to the future promise of this wonderful institution.  

Thank you for being here. Thank you for believing in this work.

And thank you for helping us build what’s next—boldly, responsibly, and together.