With President Timothy Foster retiring, what kind of characteristics or requirements should we as students be looking for when it comes to our ideal successor?
Do we as students have any real idea as to what a president of a university does? Our president highlights our overachievers, sends out emails of our students who have passed away and addresses while informing us on national issues that will affect our small community all while reporting directly to the board with initiatives and campus policies.
Being a visible representative is enough to achieve what President Foster has done for our school but what if we could have even more than that? What would students like to see in a new President that Foster hasn’t been able to offer us?
Should the university’s new president be someone completely different than what we have had in the past?
What worked and what didn’t?
President Foster has had in my opinion, superb communication skills when it comes to telling us as students what we need to know through email. That’s both expectable and entirely the problem. An over-reliance on email.
I want to see a new president with a bit of a higher social media presence. Someone that doesn’t feel out of the student or professor’s reach when it comes to having a casual conversation online or bringing up an issue that bugged them.
There is very much a large divide when it comes to the students, teachers, board members, and individuals that work closely with the president. That makes for a lot of people or hoops to jump through.
Regardless of where you land when it comes to Bernie Sanders is popular with younger voters, he was successful to a degree because of the way in which he catered to the audience he was trying to reach.
Our new president must have a very strong social media outreach to the degree that we as students can feel like we can have a friendly and informed casual conversation with them.
Governor Polis, to a degree, has that same feeling of availability when it comes to reaching out to him on Twitter.
All the people listed here have also been very outspoken about progressive policies that are going to affect our generation.
To have leader where we can feel that they genuinely have our back.
I don’t want to say that President Foster hasn’t adopted any of these requirements I am demanding, nor do I want to take away from any of the work that he has done for our school and community.
The simple fact of the matter that I want to argue is that our university’s representatives should always be taking us further forward and never a step backward.
Each one of our leaders going forward need to be able to achieve more than what their predecessor has because as long as we don’t get complacent, we will move forward. That all starts with highly effective communication and the availability to care about us and any issues that we may find ourselves in the years to come.
