Editorial – OUS: Choose Whitmore

Only Wim Wiewel and Jon Whitmore appear interested, knowledgeable and qualified enough to become the next Portland State president. Though Whitmore lacks the charisma we would like to see in a president, he is the best choice for our burdened university.

Whitmore, the outgoing president of Texas Tech University, has placed a priority on people. And although we know that people are the core of this university, it is a core that has seen little nurturing and modest development in recent years.

While Portland State has matured externally, its internal growth has been stilted. Like an adolescent whose limbs grew too long, Portland State has seen drastic expansion in enrollment, capital construction and external presence in the Portland community. Meanwhile, the university’s internal growth has been unable to keep up.

The result? We’re an awkward and gawky school still trying to find its place in a well-established family of Oregon universities. We have faculty who are overworked and underpaid. We have students who can’t find classes to take or advisers for assistance. Instead of receiving the guidance they need, many students still transfer out of Portland State or instead drop out.

We are a university that has achieved much of its identity by being filled with hardworking underdogs. But for this university’s heart to match its continuing physical growth, it must gain what the Oregon flagship institutions have long had: legitimacy.

Whitmore, although much less outgoing than Wiewel, seems to have identified how Portland State can gain that legitimacy: Everyone in the university needs guidance and unity.

Whitmore has shown that he can help a university develop holistically. At Texas Tech, enrollment has risen by about 4,000 students since the time that he started as president in 2003. But as enrollment increased, so did the number of faculty: close to 400 faculty have come to the university during his five-year stint.

Numbers aside, Whitmore seems concerned with connecting students to faculty and faculty to the administration. He is less concerned with being an administrator–someone who must sell the product of the university–and more concerned with helping the people of the university. His goals seem to hit the core of what Portland State should be: a place where people can work, grow and, most importantly, learn.

Wiewel would be an incredible addition to this university, but his plans for it seem more like strategies for a business than methods to mend an under-funded and unhappy university. He seems more like a financial and administrative planner than the figurehead this university needs.

Wiewel is gregarious, innovative and knowledgeable. But his experience working with the intricacies of a university-of attracting faculty and retaining students–seems limited in comparison to Whitmore.

Kathie Olsen is easily the most unique candidate. Her experience with the National Science Foundation and background teaching science give her an appeal that is contemporary to Portland State because of the administration’s emphasis on the sciences.

But during her visits she proved that she is disconnected from the environment of a university. She showed that she has difficulty seeing eye to eye with the concerns of students and faculty.

Whitmore, however, will give this university the heart that it needs. His presidency will spark the final changes that will mature Portland State into the legitimate institution it is meant to be.