WNMU President José Coll talks to the Beat

By Mary Alice Murphy

On the first day of the fall semester classes at Western New Mexico University, the 16th President Dr. José Coll told the Beat that he had just come from the cafeteria, where he had talked to students, building relationships with them.

To the first question about what drew Coll to apply for the presidency centered on an interesting connection he already had with the university.

Coll comes from serving as Provost at Western Oregon University, and he said he had written a letter of recommendation for a colleague of his who was considering taking a position at WNMU a couple of years ago. "He would have been a remarkable asset to the institution, but he made the decision not to accept the position because of the challenge that so much of our industry in Grand County is facing, which is housing. They looked around and said: 'There's no housing.'"

He continued: "It is a severe problem within our community that I think the university, in partnership with others, I hope we can tackle and engage this conversation in a meaningful way to to explore ways that we can move forward."

Coll noted that he last year recognized that WNMU was going to be doing a search for the presidency. "I remember when I had looked at the university to write this letter of recommendation, how much it mirrored my own lived experience. How the students' experience was so similar—not all of our students—but so similar to the experience that I had, as a native Spanish speaker, as a nontraditional student, of going to an access institution. I started at community college, and the impact that institutions of our type have on the social mobility of our students kind of resonated deeply, not only for myself but my wife as well, Cari, who also is a first gen college student. So the the more I looked into the institution, its mission, vision, the more I gravitated to it, and I was a provost at a university that was very similar in size, and also rural, as well as being a Hispanic-serving institution."

Coll said: "There's so much, not only that was happening, but that continues to happen at WNMU that that aligns to my values and the type of institution that I wanted to lead."

Then he ran into a snag. The search company that WNMU used, Anthem, could not recruit him directly because it is the same company they use at Western Oregon. "So, I had to reach out to Anthem and say, 'I know you can't recruit me, but I'm really interested in this position,' and then we ended up having to have a conversation with my president at Western Oregon, so he would know that it was not Anthem trying to poach me away. I was very interested in this institution and this position. But there for a little while, they couldn't speak to me. So I was the one really engaging in the conversation and showing that I was truly interested in the job."

About the interview portion of the process, he told of a mentor that he had many years ago. "I had a mentor, Judy Genshaft, who was the president of the University of South Florida. When I started kind of moving up in the academic rank world, she shared with me a tip on interviewing. She said, 'You either want to be first or last. Don't be in the middle. So my Zoom interview for this position, I was dead last. I was traveling, and I was at a hotel doing a Zoom. I posted a sticky sign of the door: Do not disrupt, please. I told Anthem that I was willing to be last on Zoom, but I want to be first in person. Do not stick me in the middle. And I've carried that kind of mindset or approach just because I had a great mentor."

He said the interviewers were really exhausted after having interviews of at least 12 before him. "I remember telling myself they're going to be exhausted listening to about 12 candidates answer the same questions."So, I opened my conversation with them by saying 'I recognize where you're at, you're exhausted, so my job is to kind of give you this last push,' and we had a great conversation. This university put a really good committee in place for the search. It was really helpful."

Coll replied to a question about his primary goals for the first year, and then long term.

"First year, you know, as you can imagine, coming to a university that's been in the limelight for the last two years, it is my responsibility now to help our community turn that chapter and look forward to the future. Build trust among our community collectively, community including students, faculty, staff, and the broader community that we serve. Build relationships."

Because he is new to New Mexico, he has to build relationships by traveling to engage other presidents at the universities in the state. " I have to build relationships with our state legislators, build relationships with our congressional leadership as well. So I'm hoping to be in D.C. by the end of next month. You know, the the job of the president is is so relational, and I think the presidency has changed quite drastically. Where we become almost quasi politicians, and whether we want to accept it or not, it comes with the territory. That's just the reality of the university presidency nowadays. So this first year is about building relationships, building trust, listening, being very humble, recognizing that everyone that has been here or has come is here with a lived experience that that we want to cherish and value and understand."

"As we move forward into the legislative session, our priority is housing for our institution," Coll said. "We're over capacity. We're doubling up in rooms that should be single. We're at 115 percent capacity rate. The next push for us will be to get support to renovate Ritch Hall for no less than $15 million, because of current compliance, living standards, you name it. We want to keep the the history of the building, but the internal part is where we have to renovate, and then working closely with the leadership. Even if we did Ritch Hall, we will still be at 95, 97% capacity because Ritch Hall could only most likely occupy maybe about 70-75, students."

Coll said the university will likely be looking at a public-private partnership, a P3 model, "if we want to add housing to grow our enrollment in a meaningful way. And right now, we really can't grow enrollment on campus. We could do online, we could do tech programs, we could do dual enrollment, but to bring more students on campus that also contribute to the economy of Silver City and Grand County, we literally kind of have our hands tied at the moment without new housing."

He noted the enrollment this year so far is about 1% down from last year. To a comment that the university is down 1 percent, but still doesn't have enough housing, he replied: "We've never
had enough housing. We built for single occupancy, so that automatically kind of slows you down. Our undergrad enrollment today is at 1732. We'll have our true enrollment numbers the third week of the semester, because we still have drop and add opportunities, so we're going to probably most likely be approximately about the same size that we were last year, just shy of 3000 students total."

Coll told the Beat that he has not yet encountered any barriers or problems that he was not prepared to engage in meaningful conversations about. He credited that to the special audit that was conducted. Because he got to see everything as a candidate,"it was almost like seeing a a script of a movie and it got showcased. It was all there for me to understand. So in some ways, that has provided me the opportunity to not only mentally be prepared, but more importantly, be able to ask the right questions of how do we move forward."

"So here we were. I was able technically to walk in and say, okay, I see what's happening, what we've done, some of the remedies and recommendations. I also have been very lucky. I followed an interim, and I think Dr. (Chris) Maples is a remarkable human being. I'm taking advantage of the calmness that he was able to instill in the institution, and I can't thank him enough. You know, you've got interims come and do the bare minimum, and he was not one of those. He really embraced the identity and the culture of our institution and community, and did everything he could in his power to make sure it was a better place for the next president."

To a question about staffing, he said that as they go into strategic planing, he will know more about where the university is understaffed or perhaps overstaffed. But he noted that his office once had a staff of three and now it is down to one. "Alejandra is
doing a remarkable job in managing that, but that means it also takes time away from me, from my ability to engage in more meaningful tasks or more strategic tasks. I continue to evaluate the roles that our staff are having around campus and explore it as we engage in this strategic planning in the future. What is the alignment between the strategic plan and our budget? So then we can make informed decisions of how we move forward."

"I think my responsibility is is to listen to how the impact that understaffing is having on our staff, and then how that impacts our student success. I'm very student-centric, and I'm trying to make sure we make decisions that support the success of our students.
He said his preliminary observation on a trade school is that "we need to invest in the trades. If we make it a school or college or center, and kind of centralize the trades, those are conversations that occur in a much broader community. It will be part of our strategic planning because we would have to make investments in the trades to grow. You know, if you look at just our region, if you just look at Grant County, Freeport is one of the largest employers in the area. They clearly they have more needs for higher tech welders, HVAC, electricians, construction, mechanics. As well as individuals that understand artificial intelligence and where does that fit in the trade and construction work. As an institution, which is one of the things why I gravitated to Western New Mexico University was that this is a university like no other in so many ways that we do everything. We take a student who needs a GED all the way to their master's, and and it could be that they start on their GED and then they get a certificate in welding, and then we still keep that relationship and keep that door open for access, and maybe they come back later on and they get a baccalaureate degree, and then we're still here. They get a master's degree. "

"It's kind of like me," he said. "I went from an AA degree to an EMT to wildland firefighter to then Marine Corps and then later earning a degree. So I I see the trades in some ways it could be the stopgap in the sense of like this is the the path that they chose and they became a mechanic and we need mechanics and we need individuals who work on HVAC and we could be also an opportunity for an open door for an individual who thought that maybe higher education wasn't for them. So I, think the capacity for us to do more is that area is really exciting."

He gave an example: "One of our new assistant coaches said: 'My AC went out, and I can't find somebody to come fix it."

About how AI (artificial intelligence)might impact higher education, he replied: "I could write a dissertation on that one."
And then he continued: You know, there's two ways to look at it, and I've had this conversation with some colleagues and faculty, and we could treat AI like the way we treated calculators when they first came out, and we could object to them, and now we all have them in our phones. We could treat artificial intelligence the way Kodak treated digital photography, and now we all do digital photography. Or, or we could really embrace it and recognize that it is shaping how we function. It does not have to shape how we think. We should use it to help our students learn to use it ethically And think where it fits in the curriculum and where it doesn't. If we don't, other institutions, who have embraced it, will run with it, and they have."

Coll noted that one of his colleagues, who is president of a university in San Francisco, now has an entire artificial intelligence MBA program. "I, encourage our faculty to not shy away. Now let's not go back to blue books. That's what I tell folks. Let's figure it out. I think it will shape and will continue to shape not only higher education but in every industry out there. We just have to embrace it and more importantly I think it's teaching our students and our community how to use it ethically that will be the most important part."

He said he uses it frequently for data analysis as a check system, when he runs his own analysis and then runs it through AI "to see if we end up with the same results. If I get a large document, I periodically will ask AI to summarize it to help me kind of be able to digest. Then I go back and read the document. So there's a lot of great ways to to utilize it to save time and to also help you to be a thought partner, but not think for you. And that's why I tell people let it be a thought partner, but don't let it think for you. This is one thing that we can still do as human beings; don't take that away from us."

Coll then had to leave for another meeting.

To a final quick question about the return of baseball to the university, he said he supports it, but it would require more housing. "We don't even have enough housing for a pickleball team."

Welcome to Western New Mexico University, President José Coll.