April 9, 2026

A couple of weeks ago, two students from the Dumke Center for Civic Engagement came by my office for a 20-second interview. I invited them to talk for a bit, and they stayed for nearly an hour more.

These first-year students were a reminder of the "before times," when students went to high school in person, participated in clubs and activities, and enjoyed rituals of adolescence. They also reflected traits of Gen Alpha, the students of today and tomorrow, students who know reality to be both physical and virtual.

As they talked, they spoke of aspects of the Westminster student experience that we've been cultivating for years. They saw the focus on outdoors and wellness everywhere, from activities and programs to the encouragement of staff and faculty to go outside and find outdoor places to study. It was important to them. They saw opportunities for leadership and had jumped into student government roles. They excitedly described the connections they were seeing among their classes, activities, and the things they were learning, and I said, “that’s because we have staff and faculty who work together, across their disciplines.” The fact that they could see those connections meant they were developing an incredibly important skill of which they should be proud.

I told them that somebody new would be congratulating them at their own commencement in a few years, because I was retiring, and they asked me about my presidential transition. What did I do when I first arrived at Westminster?

I said I spent the first year trying to figure out what one of our trustees, Preston Chiaro, called Westminster’s “secret sauce”: what makes us remarkable, unique, and what we do well. That first year I hired a lot of people, because that’s often what you need to do in a time of transition. I focused on things that were distinctly human and embodied, and things consistent with that vision which people told me wouldn’t, or couldn’t ever happen—like finishing Gillmor Hall, or getting lights on Dumke Field.

And of course, there were things about arriving at Westminster that I didn’t mention to the students. We had just decided to close aviation, one of our largest and most popular undergraduate programs. In addition to this and other attempts to reduce spending, we had experienced years of declining enrollments, leading to a sizable deficit that I inherited my first fiscal year. Longtime faculty and staff would pull me aside and say, “You know, we closed down once before. I think it’s going to happen again.”

Then, within 18 months, the whole world closed down. When I’m asked about the most difficult times, and the most challenging leadership decisions I had to make, I think about COVID-19. New classroom technology and cleaning protocols. Masks, testing, vaccines; what to allow and what to restrict. I remember Spencer Bagley telling me, when I allowed some activities, “You’ll have blood on your hands.” Let’s be clear: we’ve faced many more challenges during and since then, like insurrection, national disasters, economic disruptions, wars, protests, deportations, funding threats, and more wars. But during Covid, we came together as a community. I came to know and deeply appreciate our working group, which included Han Kim, Bri Buckley, Aaron Lewis, Tony Russell, Traci Siriprathane, Kenton Gregory, Holly Patterson, Emily Swanson, Sara Demko, Laura Kendellen, and Rick Hackford. We have come together as a community many times since then around our core identity and values, from inclusion to academic freedom.

I also didn’t mention to those students so many recent successes which you helped to make happen: our overall undergraduate student enrollment this year grew measurably over last year—by about 9%—for the first time nearly in 15 years. It will grow again next year, according to our projections of returning students and the trends we’re seeing for new students. Graduate student numbers hit that turnaround point last year.

This year, our first-year retention rate hit an all-time high of 86%. Provost Lance Newman recently shared national survey results from our undergraduates, noting that we outperform our peer institutions in new students’ academic motivation and grit, and returning students rate us more highly in total satisfaction, institutional loyalty, and faculty/staff support as a motivator of their success. Graduating students report impressive outcomes, with 97% of recent grads saying that their Westminster degree was valuable in helping them achieve their professional goals, and approximately 90% reporting that they are employed, continuing education, or participating in a service program after graduation.

These results are because of the incredible work that you continue to do. Your work makes it easier to promote Westminster as a whole, from recruiting and retaining students to driving philanthropy. Speaking of philanthropy, by the time we finish the semester, and during my time as president, we will have raised $100M.

That donor support has been critical to withstanding the synchronized compression that has affected all of higher education, “whereby every revenue stream and expense category is under pressure at the same time” (Education Advisory Board, 2026). We’ve been able to offer some stability, but not significant increases in compensation. The solution to increasing compensation is increasing long-term revenue. Our current enrollment momentum is promising; we are headed into the traditional May deposit deadline with an 18% increase in admitted undergraduates and increasing new student deposits. If we can sustain that success, I would expect the Board to increase compensation later this year.

The next Westminster president will be tasked with not only sustaining our successes, but also working with you to meet the challenges ahead. Let’s start with some of the bigger stressors at this moment. As a colleague of mine, Terri Givens, author of Radical Empathy, says, “What is happening in the US and frankly, the world, goes beyond almost anything I have experienced in my lifetime—it is an existential crisis for democracy. It is a crisis driven by fear—for some, it is the fear of losing privilege, for others it is fear of losing what we thought was progress."

These, and so many other fears at this moment, are real. But our job is to offer our students hope and possibility. As Ada Palmer wrote recently, “As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. . . . Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it” (Chronicle of Higher Education).

And in those classrooms, it’s tempting to wring our hands about unprepared students, loss of attention spans, and the demise of critical thinking. Educators bemoan a generation arriving on campus less prepared—academically, socially, and professionally. Some have called students the “dopamine generation,” as journalism has moved from newspapers, to multimedia, to clickbait; athletics has gone from playing sports, to watching sports, to betting on sports; and visual media like film and TV are being replaced by YouTube videos and TikTok. Today’s students have been raised on instant reward, shaped by algorithms that fuel self-righteousness and moral indignation. Add to that “a contracting labor market for new graduates making entry-level jobs harder to access and early-career outcomes less predictable. . . and artificial intelligence rewriting the foundations of work” (Education Advisory Board).

Discouraging? Perhaps. We need to think about what this means for both students and educators. I think our students are starting to tell us more about what they want, and need, from education. They need what they can’t get from technology alone. As technology changes what they think and do, it must change what we do, too.

We know that AI is rapidly evolving to accomplish tasks and make decisions and is changing what constitutes expertise and who has access to it. “The barrier to entry for expertise theater has dropped to zero” (Harvard Business Review, March 2026). AI systems can generate, curate, and synthesize information at scale. So, our focus must be on navigating, evaluating, and integrating knowledge across varied sources and contexts. Assessing credibility. Articulating reasoning. Understanding others and connecting with who they are and what they find meaningful.

One of the more compelling ways I’ve found to think about the relationship between artificial intelligence and education is moving education from epistemology to ontology, or, a lot less about what you know, how, and what counts, and a lot more about being. As Paul LeBlanc puts it, “If I’m right about moving from epistemology to ontology, which are really questions about being and how are you in the world, what does it mean to be a good human, how do you understand and navigate a world of others. . . that’s the realm of the humanities. That’s what literature does. That’s what stories do.”

This may seem directly counter to the hyper attention to education and the workforce. Rather, the changes should force us to reconsider both the kind of work that will need to be done, and the centuries-old aim of eudaimonia, the Aristotelian concept of flourishing in a life full of meaning and purpose, a life well-lived. The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, is at the forefront of agentic AI development. He writes, “Meaning comes mostly from human relationships and connection, not from economic labor. . . humans can find purpose even over very long periods of time through stories and projects they love. We simply need to break the link between the generation of economic value and self-worth and meaning” (“Machines of Loving Grace”).

Of course, bills need to be paid, and people need to earn a living. Jobs are still important, but they are changing. LeBlanc talks about looking forward to a time when knowledge work is obliterated, and we “get back to jobs that actually make us feel better about ourselves, that actually improve the lives of others, that actually improve our communities,” such as teachers, social workers, clinicians, psychologists, and coaches. These are among the jobs our public institutions are pressured to eliminate because they are deemed to have low economic value.

Here’s where a Westminster education is so responsive to students and so important to support now and into the future. The distinctiveness we have been building has so much promise: our infusion of liberal arts that engages questions of humanity, ethics, and purpose; our embrace of the physical world, which must continue even as virtual ones expand; and our focus on learning in and creating communities of care. What we do is messy, imperfect, and human. It centers on students and their development. It is authentic, relevant, and powerful.

Back to our two students in the office. They asked a question I’ve gotten many times since announcing my retirement. What is the legacy I want to leave?

For me, legacy is about two things. The first is leaving Westminster in better shape than I found it. That might be a tough one, given everything that we’ve been through in the last decade. But you, and our alumni, and our friends can list numerous points of collective pride that isn’t my legacy, it’s ours. As I list some of these, think about the imperatives for the future that I just outlined. Our achievements include: opening a new community mental health clinic that also supports degrees in Mental Health Counseling Education and Supervision; launching a Doctor of Nursing Practice - Nurse Anesthesia; fully funding and opening the L.S. Skaggs Integrated Wellness Center; increasing on-campus student residency; growing athletics and club sports through efforts like the Mountain Sports initiative; competing in intercollegiate speech and debate; successfully transitioning to a new food service provider, which included renovating the Manford A. Shaw Center and creating expanded student space; acquiring a successful, non-profit global learning institute enabling, among other things, alumni travel and the Sophomore Study Away initiative; celebrating commencement on campus and outside; community time; Student Showcase; completing the transition to Westminster University; and enjoying a wildly successful sesquicentennial year. Our 150th gave us many opportunities to invoke our history of proud independence from church and state, belief in the power of education to elevate humanity, and commitments to equal opportunity and inclusion.

Leaving behind a better Westminster is, for me, also about creating and affirming the core values of shared humanity; authentic and inclusive affirmation of individual identities; and knowledge born of openness, questioning, and discernment. It’s about providing a foundation of distinctiveness so embedded in the Westminster experience that students take it for granted. When the students in my office said that the focus on outdoors and wellness was really important to them, it was affirming. I was proud when they said that they stepped into leadership positions before they thought they were ready and were thriving. Our student leaders are helping to drive student engagement, supported and cultivated by our student affairs professionals. Last week’s Associated Students of Westminster (ASW) elections drew a 51% voter participation rate, the highest we’ve seen for nearly 15 years.

The second part of legacy is, for me, a bit more personal. Of all the things I’ve valued at Westminster, and throughout a 40-year university career based mostly at three institutions, the people and relationships have been the most important. At Westminster, it includes interactions and interviews with students and faculty and staff participants in the emerging leader cohort, which led to cherished relationships with people like Alicia Cunningham-Bryant, Spencer Potter, and Oliver Anderson. It includes the “regulars” at morning cycling classes and so-called “late night breakfast,” numerous conversations with faculty leaders like Julia Kamenetzky and David Parrott, and working with my Cabinet colleagues—Sheila, Kathryn, Daniel, Tam, Jessica, Caroline, John, Lance, and of course, perhaps most importantly, Emmalee. This Cabinet, building on others before them, is phenomenal, and I will miss working with them. They keep Westminster going in often unseen and underappreciated ways, and they have been wonderful to work with.

Throughout my time here, it’s the little moments that I remember most vividly. I simply can’t recount them all, or we’d never get through the rest of the program. Here are a few: It’s Kim Zarkin telling me, at my first reception, “We’re going to hold your feet to the fire.” It’s Jo Hinsdale telling me during my first semester how we’re different from places like the one up the street. She said, “You can get a great education at a lot of places, but it’s inescapable at Westminster.” It’s Earl saying good morning as he’s watering the flowers. It’s Josh Pittman bringing the men’s soccer team to play my alma mater in my hometown and sending me a beautiful photo of the team enjoying a foggy Humboldt County beach. It’s Lance Newman characterizing a Westminster education as “agency and impact.” It’s Jonas D’Andrea stopping me to ask a quick question (which it never is). It’s getting a Beery award from the IFDS crowd (thank you, Jeff Nichols, and Kellie Gerbers for bringing so much joy and tradition to Westminster). It’s trivia night with the incredibly talented Sarah Lof. It’s the moment during a spring address, when I was defending the importance of academic freedom and a course taught by Dr. Eileen Chanza Torres, and Chris Eggett jumped to escort a disruptor out of the auditorium. It’s Dr. Tam telling me, “Just write the book.”

They and countless other people here have influenced me. I hope my own legacy shows in the way I’ve positively influenced others; something like an expanded coaching tree of relationships and people whom I’ve had some small part in helping. It’s the former student who gave me a photo last month of the two of us in 1993, in a frame that says, “Never underestimate the difference you’ve made and the lives you’ve touched.” I’m proud of her, of the students who have pursued passions and professions, of faculty who have felt supported and energized, and of staff and administrators who have successfully advanced in roles of leadership and impact.

Finally, those students in my office asked why I became a university president, and if it was something that I’d always wanted to do. I said not really. I’ve just wanted to help make the world more equitable, sustainable, and humane. I shared a story about my time as provost. This was back in 2010. I had been diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer. My son, Randall, was in fourth grade at the time, and he had recently lost a grandmother–my mother–and an uncle to cancer. One night at bedtime he seemed particularly worried. He said, “Mom, I’m not doing very well in my science classes. I’m just not great at it.”

I said something like, “That’s ok, as long as you’re trying,” but I figured there was more going on than angst about school. So I asked him, “Do you know what I do for work?” I figured he didn’t; no one really knows what a provost does. I said, “Look, I’m not the best at science, either. I’ll never find a cure for cancer. But I can try to create the best possible learning and research environments for the teachers and students who will.”

That led to a few tears in my office, but those Westminster students immediately got the point. They said, “That’s what we do here. We bring different people together to solve problems.” Those students see that here, because you have created that powerful learning environment. You’ve amplified the power of our distinctiveness and made Westminster better for it. Thank you all.

And particularly, thank you to Randy. For the past 35 years, Randy has been the one saying, “You’re incredible, you’d be great, you should go for it.” He has pushed me toward people and opportunities (literally shoved me sometimes). I wouldn’t be here without him. At the same time, he’s seen firsthand the realities of this job, and now says repeatedly, “I want my wife back.” It’s time for me to go home.

The impact that you all have had on me and the ways we have built Westminster into something distinctive and sustainable is the best legacy I can think to leave. So I leave that now to you, and soon to Westminster’s next president, with deep gratitude and best wishes for a bright future.