Fallon Deatherage
News Editor
For the 13th time in school history, ISU has a new president.
Kevin Satterlee took over for former president Arthur Vailas, who retired this last summer. The Bengal sat down with Satterlee for an exclusive interview last week. The full interview can be found on The Bengal’s Facebook page.
It’s been nearly ten weeks since you officially started. What do you think is the most important thing you have accomplished so far?
Well, probably the most important thing so far is setting a tone for the future. Starting to talk about how we want to be an institution where we build on a foundation of trust and hope for our future. And about setting the tone, that the reason we are here is for our students. The students-first mission concept. And I think that’s probably the main thing that I’ve accomplished. Because you start in an organization by setting what your basic tone is going to be, what your roles are going to be, so that everyone knows and gets on that same page moving forward. So, in ten weeks I’ve started that. It takes time. That type of culture change, that type of mission driven change, takes time to work its way down in an organization, but that’s probably our most important thing so far.
After your address to the faculty, Jim DiSanza, Chairman of the Department of Communication Media and Persuasion, told the Idaho State Journal that “I felt as if a 12-year storm is clearing–or like an enormous weight has been lifted off of us.” How does hearing that from a faculty member make you feel?
Well, he is one of our many outstanding faculty, and it makes me feel that there is a lot to do. If we have some of our outstanding faculty who feel that they have, for a decade, been under some weight–some negative pressure– it’s going to take some time to work on that, and that’s quite a responsibility. So, it makes me think we have a lot of work to do to get where we’re going. You know I wish I could say, “oh that makes me feel great about what I said,” but that’s not how I feel. I feel empathy for the fact that it’s been difficult for professors. So, we are trying to set a new tone. We are trying to move forward in the culture and I realize that there’s a lot of work to do to make sure we get to where we need to be as an institution and we are on mission. We have a lot of work to do.
In your welcome email to students you stated that the first day of fall classes is your favorite day of the year, what has this first week been like for you?
It is. I literally love it on the first day of fall classes. A university campus over the summer starts to feel a little quiet and sleepy and doesn’t have a lot of energy. The students are what give a university campus energy. To all of a sudden, go from being sorta sleepy over the summer to full of students mingling around and going to class and moving around campus, it changes the entire feel. It’s just fantastic. So, the first day of classes I had my senior staff meeting. It went from 9 to 10. At about a quarter to 10, I stopped the meeting. We walked out of the building and we walked to the middle of the quad and looked around — reminding everyone why we’re here. It’s for the students who were moving to and from class. And then this week, at the involvement fair, I handed out popcorn to students and I shook student’s hands. Several came up to talk to me. Some of them said, “Hey, I wanna talk to you about this, or thank you for the email, or welcome and the energy has returned to the campus. And I love that feel. It is genuinely the reason why we’re here. Education changes people’s lives. It’s our students who we’re here for, and that’s the great reminder.
Last week you announced changes to ISU’s internet policy. Why the changes? Why now?
Well, why now? Let me start with that one because it’s the easier part. That’s because I arrived. I’ve not been here all that long, and I’m starting to look with a different lens. Every person who comes into a situation brings a different point of view, and I came in and I started looking at things, and one of the first things I found was that as an institution, we have charged students for access to the Wi-Fi. My thought is this: our students pay a lot in tuition and fees and there are certain things they should be able to expect from that. One of them is access to the campus computer system and the Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is something that I think students should be able to expect from a research university, that it’s provided as part of the services they pay for. I think everyone knows if you want to do something extra, you might have to pay for extra services. But Wi-Fi ought to be part of what we do for our students. Because it helps our students. Those are just the types of things that as a research university, we should provide. Our students should be able to expect it as part of their quality education.
It also follows another philosophy which we’re just starting to get into, which is we need to make sure we remove barriers from student’s ability to access education. We shouldn’t be putting hurdles in the way. Whether it’s in registration, whether it’s in admissions, whether it’s in graduation requirements–obviously not in academic graduation requirements–but other hoops that students have to jump through. We need to find ways to minimize those as much as possible because there’s no reason to have artificial barriers in place. Working through university to graduate is already a difficult task. It’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to learn. You’re supposed to have to learn new things, but there shouldn’t be artificial barriers. So, we need to take a look at those. When I saw the students had to pay for Wi-Fi, to me, that was a barrier we had to get rid of.
Moving forward, what three goals are you planning to accomplish this semester?
How about I’ll answer what three things we’re going to get started this semester. Because meaningful change–meaningful goals–take a while to get accomplished.
So, let’s start with this one. First, one is a campus master plan. A physical master plan. What should our campus look like in the future? What are our goals? And it’s both for the campus here, and in Idaho Falls, and in Meridian, and in Twin Falls. What’s the future of our campus? We have to have a plan that shows all of our constituents–our students, our alumni–that we’re going to invest in our campus and in our future. That requires us to have a master plan. How are we going to invest? What facilities need upgrades? Where do we need new facilities? The beginning process of master planning effort takes a lot of time because you want to take input. Students should have a say. Alumni should have a say. The community should have a say. Our faculty and staff should have a say. So, we need to bring in consultants, take input, and set forth a plan for the future of our campus. So that’s one: getting that master plan started.
The second one is back to what I said at the very beginning of this interview–setting the tone. Making sure that we are building a culture where our employees are operating from that concept of trust, compassion, stability, hope for the future–that’s really important. So, we’re going to continue to work on that. We’re already having discussions about our new employee orientation program where we bring in new employees and make sure that they understand the type of culture that we want to make sure we have here built on trust. So, working on that culture and mission point.
Last, we have a great strategic plan with some great strategic goals about our future. Now it’s a matter of how we’re going to accomplish those. We need to identify the specific strategies that will move us forward. What are the right programs that our students need to be more employable upon graduation, so they have meaningful gainful employment? What are the right things to put in those programs? As I’ve met with some of our regional employers, if they tell me, “when I hire a student from this particular major, they need to come to me with these skill sets to be more employable.” Well then, I have to make sure that those skill sets are communicated to the faculty so that those become part of the program so that those students become more employable.
So those would be the three: working on a master plan for our future, setting our tone for our culture, and ensuring we have the right programs and strategies to put in place to realize our strategic plan.
