MIDORI DAVIS | Editor-in-Chief
He’s a fixture, an ever-present force on campus for the last 12 years. The faculty. Academic priorities. The student body profile. The “brand” of the university itself. Now he’s stepping down, his successor to be named. In an exclusive wide-ranging interview with The VanCougar, WSU Vancouver Chancellor Mel Netzhammer states his case: on his legacy, on the university’s present and future.
Editor’s note: Netzhammer’s comments have been edited here for brevity.
(VC) Please establish your leadership role. To what extent do branch campuses such as ours take instructions from Pullman?
“When I first started, we were very much like a branch campus and took most of our direction from Pullman. That has really changed over the years, we’ve been given much more autonomy, we’ve been given a much stronger voice. All the campuses have been given a stronger voice in the leadership of the system … The strength of the system has come by recognizing that each campus is integrated into its community.
To what extent does WSU Vancouver forge its own vision and operate independently with you at the helm?
“Extensively. We have our own strategic plan. We just make sure it naturally follows from the WSU system strategic plan. We have our own fundraising goals, we recruit ourselves … We have our own budget, we keep our own tuition dollars … And we’re held accountable for it. Where we are really integrated [with Pullman] is on the academic side … We support the same curriculum. There may be variations, but those are intentional and worked out with the dean of the college.”
What does it mean that (former WSU President) Kirk Schultz was your boss?
“He has been my boss, yes. Most systems have a chancellor of the system and presidents of each of their campuses … The board hires the president, the president hires the chancellor of each of the campuses.”
Your announcement to step down coincides with Kirk Schultz’s. Why?
“We’ll be leaving close to the same day, [Schultz] announced his to the board last April. We’ve been moving in this direction for me since I signed my last contract [in 2021] … We needed to do it in a way that his successor will be appointed in enough time to interview [and appoint] my successor. And so having his search start over the summer, have mine start early in the fall, has created that opportunity.”
Pullman’s new Provost, Chris Riley-Tillman, is launching a sweeping review of program alignment with institutional goals. Does that apply to us in Vancouver?
“I expect that over the next couple of years that the campus will be having some of those same conversations. He has been a huge supporter of Vancouver. He’s got ideas. For example, he doesn’t think that every program needs to be on every campus. And so he thinks about ‘is Vancouver the best campus for this particular program?’… He and I have had more conversations about residence halls on campus than I think my own cabinet has had with me of late, because he sees that as a way to help build the campus. All of that will be done with the next chancellor.”
Are we delivering on our promise?
“Yes, absolutely … But it has definitely been a slow recovery [from the pandemic]. We’ve sort of stabilized with enrollment, but we’re not growing again. I think we are seeing this year, for the first time since the pandemic, a real vibrancy in campus life that we got hints of last year. Students are staying for events after classes. The quad is always filled with people. There’s excitement about the new building … There is a vibrancy and excitement, a campus culture, a campus community that feels familiar and new again.”
Several institutions in the region – Portland State and Clark College among them – have a brand. What’s ours?
“We are Cougs … our brand begins with Coug Nation … But I think locally, it’s much, much more than that. I think the way we are connected to the community where we’re located is unique, special, really appreciated and enjoyed by the local community and hugely important to the education of our students … One of the things that I loved about WSU Vancouver from the moment I got here is that our students are already members of this community and they’re active in this community and they vote in this community. So when we talk about active citizenship or civic engagement, we’ve got that because our students are already connected to this place.”
How would you describe Coug Nation? What does it mean to be a Coug?
“They’re humble, they are committed to helping others, and so you always hear ‘Cougs helping Cougs.’ And there is a sense that this is something that is going to last past when you graduate … If you look at our new Life Sciences building, for example, and you walk through there and you see people who have donated to and named spaces in the building, many of those donors are Pullman graduates who were just so excited about this project that they wanted to be a part of that. And so there is just this sense of community that I think you feel regardless of the [WSU] campus that you graduated from.”
What is WSU Vancouver best at?
“I think that there is a – and this is particularly true since the pandemic – a level of grace and a level of understanding that our students leave, lead complex lives … We have become much better at saying, all right, this person is first of all, an individual. Our students are taking care of families, whether it’s parents or children, almost all of our students are working … there are many complex things that need to be balanced … I think the ways that we connect to the community are important for the education of our students and the health of our community … We have faculty doing research that directly benefits the community. We have faculty who are doing research that’s going to change the world.”
How do you wish for WSU Vancouver to be viewed regionally?
“One of the early things that I felt really strongly about was we need to increase visibility of the campus. We need to get more people on campus, we need to have our people out on campus, and I think we have become much more visible to the community than we ever were. I’m very proud of that fact and grateful because I think it has helped us in so many ways with donors and partnerships, but I think there’s still room to be more visible. I think we have to grow our student body to really realize the full potential of that. But we are hugely significant to Southwest Washington. We train so many of the people, 95% of our students work in this area. And so we’re preparing them for a life in Southwest Washington and beyond.”
Public higher education is under fire nationally, it seems: for graduating underprepared students, for conferring degrees of dubious value in real life and the workplace at a difficult time in the culture. Is WSU Vancouver concerned with this?
“The national narrative about higher education is absolutely against us … Questions about return on investment, how expensive it is, and how you’re not guaranteed a job on the other end … I honestly think those are fair questions to ask, but I think they are often asked with an agenda … The evidence is still very compelling that a student who graduates with a baccalaureate degree is going to have a significant income advantage over the course of their lifetime … I think that it can be short-sighted to not understand that there are multiple pathways to what I would call a life rich in meaning, and getting a baccalaureate degree is one of those, and we shouldn’t be antagonistic towards that, even if it’s not right for everyone … One of our points of pride is that half of our students here pay no tuition and incur no debt, and that’s huge, and the average debt for those who incur debt is $19,000, maybe $20,000, and so even that is a manageable amount of debt. Would I prefer that it be zero? Absolutely, but it’s not unmanageable, and it’s not the $200,000 or $250,000 in debt that you hear about in the media or from people who are questioning the value of higher education.”
Your high point as Chancellor?
“In 2014, so two years in, we were planning to celebrate our 25th anniversary, and we were going to do a gala … A day after opening it up for people to make reservations and buy tickets, we had to move to a bigger room, and within a couple of days, there was no longer a venue in southwest Washington that would hold us, and we had to move to Portland … So the evening itself was special. But then we did a paddle raise to raise money for the Second Chance Scholarship, and in [that] moment, we raised $135,000. More recently, the opening of the Life Sciences Building after advocating for a decade to get it to be here … There are also a lot of small moments where a student just stops me and says, ‘You made this possible, thank you.’ And I was at a conference this week and a colleague, someone who I’d never met before, came up and said, ‘You taught me how to engage with my students and how rewarding that is and how important that is.’”
Your low point as Chancellor?
“The pandemic, right? Personnel issues have always been a struggle for me … I understand that when I have to let an employee go, even if that person has been underperforming, I’m not just letting an individual go. It has an impact on their family, on their future career … I lose sleep … So there been some tough moments in that regard.”