Jon Whitmore believes in being an engaging president by focusing on the needs of students and faculty.
Dr. Whitmore, one of three candidates vying to be the next PSU president, said if chosen he would concentrate on putting people first, by working to retain quality faculty and making sure highly qualified students were admitted to the university. Some goals of Whitmore are to expand research programs and to make sure life sciences, public affairs and transportation research programs are able to expand.
Some of his goals for PSU are a reality at Texas Tech University, where as president, he said, he fought and won funding increases for the faculty, which included hiring new professors to help the burgeoning student population.
An open campus forum with Whitmore will be held today from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom, room 355. During his visit, Whitmore will also tour the campus and meet with other staff and students around PSU.
Additional hallmarks of Whitmore’s five-year term at Texas Tech include the “Graduate on Time Contract,” which was aimed at helping undergraduates graduate in four years, providing they take an average of 15 credits per term and meet regularly with an adviser.
Whitmore said an additional 1,400 students graduated last spring without a subsequent increase in student population because of this program. Another program instituted by Whitmore was the “Red Raider” program, which sought to provide funding to lower-income students by helping them find grants and delivering the tuition difference to them if grants and other sources of financing are unavailable.
As a president, Whitmore said, he is concerned with making sure that the quality of education at his university remains high.
Whitmore said that in order to do this, “Good faculty and students must be attracted and retained.”
Whitmore said he is set to resign from his position as Texas Tech president because of a change in the Chancellor and Board of Regents’ agenda for the school, which now focuses on drastically growing the student body population. Whitmore announced his resignation Feb. 1.
The new agenda that Texas Tech’s school board is seeking is not what he was hired to do, Whitmore said. He said he no longer feels his strengths as an administrator are suited for the task of raising the student body population to such high levels.
The new agenda aims to raise Texas Tech’s student population to 40,000 students by 2020, up from its current population of 28,000.
Whitmore said this is a legitimate agenda and should be considered by other universities in Texas since the number of high school graduates is increasing each year and will overwhelm the university system without expansion.
“Portland State’s agenda is more in line with my strengths,” he said.
Whitmore’s past teaching and administrative experience includes positions at both urban and rural universities. He was chair of the Division of Theatre and Dance at West Virginia University, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo and provost and professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa.
Some Texas Tech faculty have spoken highly of Whitmore and said he is a very popular president and a man of integrity. Dr. Herschel Mann, a member of the search committee that hired Whitmore at Texas Tech, said, “All of the things he [Whitmore] declared as goals in the early interviews, he addressed during his time as president.”
Whitmore is excited about the possibility of living and working in Portland. Because of his background in theater arts, Whitmore said he would look forward to the rich culture of urban art and entertainment in the city.
“Portland is a special city with smart development and a vibrant downtown that will help attract good faculty and students to the campus,” Whitmore said.