Incoming WWU leader arriving at a time of change

BELLINGHAM — If the Pacific Northwest is all about fleece, outdoor recreation and caring for the environment, then Western Washington University might just be the region's quintessential campus.

Fifty percent of the students come from King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. They sometimes choose Western over the more competitive University of Washington — if only to get away from their parents, avoid the social pressures of the Greek system and live in a community big enough for nightlife but not so big they feel lost.

Weekends often involve hiking or kayaking. While the UW mulls over creating a new environmental college, Western has had its own version for almost 40 years.

Change, however, can come slowly at Western. This year's freshmen were just 4 years old when Karen Morse became university president in 1993. Faculty and administrators are deadlocked in contract negotiations, which have festered for some 16 months.

But when the university on Friday picked Bruce Shepard to succeed Morse, who is retiring in September, there was a feeling that change might be coming more rapidly. Shepard, 61, a fast-talking, gregarious man, is chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

Shepard comes at a time when the university is considering breaking out of its wooded campus to expand along the waterfront below. The main campus, with more than 12,000 students, has reached its planned capacity.

Officials want the Huxley College of the Environment and other programs to move to industrial land owned by the Port of Bellingham, as part of a major reclamation project.

"This is maybe the most exciting redevelopment project anywhere in the country," said Kevin Raymond, chairman of Western's board of trustees. "It's a beautiful site, and when it's cleaned up, it may be the jewel of the Pacific Northwest."

Not everyone, however, is so enthusiastic. Some have raised concerns about the cost of decontaminating the land and the potential for earthquakes and tsunamis.

"It's really just a gleam in everybody's eye right now," said Bill Lyne, an English professor and president of the United Faculty of Western Washington. "It's not a done deal, and nobody knows if that waterfront thing is really going to happen."

Smaller classes, one-on-one time

On the day she turned 19, Western student Nicole Allen and a bunch of her friends hired a limousine and headed to the first town over the Canadian border, White Rock, B.C., and hit the clubs.

Traveling to British Columbia, where the drinking age is 19, is something of a rite of passage for Western students. But partying aside, Allen, now a senior, said the trips also help students broaden their experience.

Allen's friend Julia Harding, a senior from Lynnwood, said she was accepted to the UW but decided to come to Western instead. She likes the smaller classes and the one-on-one time she gets with professors.

"You're more than just a number here," Harding said.

Both students say they like Western's size and the fact it doesn't have a Greek system of sororities and fraternities. Their friends at the UW and Washington State University have found the system can be divisive.

Another student, Sandy Evans, 20, said there is a sense of community in the Western dorms. Nobody closes their doors. When a snowstorm hit last Thanksgiving, closing the school for a few days, the common room in her dorm became a giant slumber party.

When it comes to academics, Western has a solid reputation. U.S. News & World Report ranks it 17th among master's-granting institutions in the West and second among those that are public — behind only Cal Poly. (The UW and WSU are ranked on a different national list.)

Aside from a well-regarded environmental program, Western is known for its Woodring College of Education, considered one of the best teacher-training programs in the Northwest.

The university's Vehicle Research Institute, which designs eco-friendly car prototypes, has come up with a portable "scrubber" to convert biomethane — gas that comes from cow manure — into a natural car gas.

And Western has the quirky Fairhaven College. The 425 students there do not get grades — other than "pass" or "fail" — and get to design their own majors, like at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. Fairhaven, like Evergreen, runs its own organic garden.

"The education you get here is whole; you are not just a cog in a machine," said Fairhaven senior Jacob Linder, who is majoring in "social theory and political economy, in terms of the Internet and globalization." Many students go on to graduate school and succeed at the top of their fields in law, medicine, journalism and anthropology, said Fairhaven Dean Roger Gilman.

Students outside the college, however, joke about its drum circles and reputation as a hippie hangout.

Priorities: ties with Olympia, lack of space

When incoming president Shepard walked into a meeting with eight university deans last week, he asked them what he should be doing in his first 100 days on the job.

The deans told him he needed to communicate to lawmakers in Olympia some of the exceptional things happening at Western, to find some way to relieve the space constrictions — with the waterfront project, for instance — and to support and grow research.

"We pride ourselves on our liberal arts here," Ron Kleinknecht, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, told Shepard. "We need to always keep that, but also branch out into more applied areas."

Shepard told the deans he needed to learn from them.

"I don't have the answers. Someone who has the answers is someone you have to worry about," he said. "I like to ask people questions and make them squirm."

At Green Bay, with 6,100 students, Shepard is credited with overhauling the student sports and recreation center, developing regional partnerships and increasing the number of students of color. But perhaps most important, he helped raise $21 million in a private fundraising drive when state support in the struggling region was dropping year after year.

At Western, which has a relatively small endowment of $30 million, he will be expected to raise a lot of private money, perhaps by launching a major capital campaign.

He will also inherit a restless faculty. Two years ago, the faculty voted 300 to 284 in favor of unionizing — a vote some say would have gone the other way had Morse run the administration in a more open and inclusive manner.

Since then, the faculty and administration have been at odds over wages, workload and the grievance process.

Should they fail to reach a contract by May 15, when faculty start leaving for the summer, Shepard might find the dispute in his hands in the fall.

Morse, for her part, said she hopes to reach an agreement before then. She will leave behind a university that has grown in reputation and has become nationally recognized, she added.

Lyne, the union president, said the dispute has "created a fair bit of tension, but not to the point where we can't work together.

"Generally speaking, as angry and demoralized as the faculty is right now, we all share the belief that this is a really good school which has a really bright future."

Nick Perry: 206-515-5639 or nperry@seattletimes.com