Dr. Pamela Whitten started her first day as Kennesaw State’s fifth president on Monday, July 16, with a tour of the university’s Kennesaw campus led by Scrappy the Owl and several student ambassadors.
Before starting the campus tour, Whitten sent an email to faculty, staff and students, thanking Dr. Ken Harmon and Dr. Linda Noble for stepping into their interim leadership roles at KSU and laying out her early plans as she steps into her new role as president.
“It is my great honor to serve as your president for Kennesaw State University,” Whitten said in the email. “As I shared with many of you during my visit on campus last month, KSU has so much to be proud of, and I am excited to be a part of this vibrant and dedicated community.”
Whitten said in the email that she will spend much of her time during her first few weeks as president listening to students, faculty and staff to get an idea of their thoughts and feelings on what some of the “greatest opportunities and challenges” are at KSU.
Whitten said in an interview that she hopes to find out what KSU is, what it is “really good at,” what it values and what is important to the community. From there, she said she can “start to put together a roadmap” and decide on specific goals for the university moving forward.
In the email, she challenged faculty and staff to ask, “How will this benefit our students?” before making any decision or putting any idea forward. She also wrote that the university needs to work on preparing students for their careers, rather than just their first jobs, while providing more opportunities for faculty and students to collaborate on research and community outreach.
Whitten later said that the university has to find ways to help students find success, which she said includes improving retention rates and increasing the graduation rate for students “with a real eye toward students graduating in four years.” She said to address these issues, the university needs to look at what courses students need and if these courses are being offered at times that students want to take them.
Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Linda Noble announced in an email on June 27 that KSU’s six-year graduation rate has recently fallen behind the graduation rate of it’s peer institutions, and she and her team have already started working on these issues by making course scheduling changes that will be implemented by spring 2019.
Whitten said she also wants to create an environment at KSU that will set its graduates apart from students that graduate from other institutions.
“People will go, ‘Oh, that’s a Kennesaw State grad,’ and they’ll know that you have a skillset or intuition or an ability that they don’t necessarily see in students that come from other universities,” Whitten said.
Whitten also explained that, while she will spend the first few weeks in her new position learning more about KSU, she will continue to try to learn from students and the rest of the KSU community through her presidency. She said she will have formal and informal meetings with students and others to find out more about their feelings and attitudes about KSU.
“I hope students feel very comfortable approaching me and feel they can be direct and candid because we want to have a really open university in terms of being transparent and clear and respectful,” Whitten said.
Whitten said that, as of her first day on campus and serving as KSU’s new president, one of her favorite aspects of the university is the community. She said the faculty, staff and students at KSU share an enthusiasm and passion for education and for the university.
“Very, very much you get this sense of family across this place,” Whitten said. “If I get that sense in just the little bit of time I’ve been here, then it obviously must be a wonderful place.”
Whitten also said one of her favorite facets of KSU is it’s potential as a university in a thriving community and state. She said a combination of the types of students at KSU, the dedicated staff, the types of faculty and the location of the university in metro Atlanta and in Georgia gives KSU “amazing potential” for the future.
Now that Whitten has taken over as president of KSU, the university’s former Provost and Interim President Ken Harmon plans to take on a faculty position in the School of Accountancy. Whitten said she is starting to form a committee to begin the national search process for a new Provost.
Whitten has appointed Jon Preston, the dean of the College of Computing and Software Engineering, as the chair of the search committee and they will announce committee members by the end of the week.
A welcoming ceremony is scheduled to be held for Whitten on the Kennesaw campus on Tuesday, July 17 and on the Marietta campus on Monday, July 23.
