Candidate emphasizes strategic plan, resources

Wichita State University needs a strategic plan and the resources to implement it, a candidate for the WSU president’s job said Monday.

Bjong Wolf Yeigh, who is president of the University of New York Institute of Technology in Utica, N.Y., said he would hope to have both of those things accomplished within three years of taking WSU’s top position. But Yeigh told a group of faculty and students that he wouldn’t try to do them alone.

"It does not matter what my vision is," Yeigh said. "It matters what the shared vision of the campus is.

"You’ve got to own it."

Yeigh is the fourth of five finalists for the WSU job to speak on campus.

Yeigh, who goes by the nickname "Wolf," has degrees from Dartmouth, Stanford and Princeton. He started his academic career as an assistant professor in 1995 at Oklahoma State University and has served in administrative roles at Yale, St. Louis University and Norwich (Vt.).

He also served four years in the U.S. Navy "to fulfill my promise to the country that gave me a great education, and because I believe in education, I stayed in academia," Yeigh said.

That’s also where he got his nickname.

"My nickname is still classified so I can’t tell you how that came about," he joked.

Yeigh talked about himself for about five minutes and spent the rest of the hour-long period answering questions.

He fielded a couple questions about how his background in engineering would prepare him to lead an institution with liberal arts colleges.

"For me, liberal arts form the foundation of learning to learn," he said.

But he also seemed to turn the question around on one audience member, saying he "has a problem with people who say, ‘Math isn’t my thing.’ How would you feel if I said, ‘English isn’t my thing? I’m illiterate.’

“That wouldn’t be OK, would it?"

Yeigh referred several times to the make-up of WSU’s current student body, of which about 85 percent are Kansans, primarily from the Wichita area. University shareholders have to decide whether that’s what they want the school to continue to be, or whether they want it to become a top research center or something else entirely.

"Where do you envision this university going?" he said.

He said he sensed a lot of different opinions on campus about that.

"It’s going to take a lot of effort to reconcile those differences," he said.

Another audience member noted Yeigh’s multiple career moves and asked whether he was "ready to settle down?"

"When the work is done, either I find additional responsibilities or I move on to the next challenge," Yeigh said.

"Will it be three, four, seven or 10 years? I don’t know. I can’t tell you that."

Regarding resources, Yeigh mentioned that WSU’s tuition ranks low in comparison with other institutions.

“You can’t do more with less,” he said.

Yeigh showed a considerable knowledge of college athletics, saying they pull the community together. His current college, which is a Division III school, recently added men’s and women’s lacrosse teams, he said.

"They haven’t won any games yet, but that’s OK," he said.

After the presidential forums wrap up today, members of a 20-person search committee will pass their recommendations on to the Kansas Board of Regents. The board is expected to announce the new president in May.

WSU President Donald Beggs will retire June 30 after serving the university for 13 years.

This story was originally published April 17, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Candidate emphasizes strategic plan, resources."