Josh Hawkins / UNLV Photo Services
UNLV President Keith Whitfield poses for a photo on campus Thursday, July 23, 2020. Whitfield is the 11th permanent president of UNLV.
Sunday, Sept. 20, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Keith Whitfield is one month into his tenure as the president of UNLV. The warm welcome from the Las Vegas community has made quite an initial impression.
“I love this place already. I’m a military brat, I’ve moved around all my life and you always give it time to let things happen,” Whitfield said. “This place, I love.”
Whitfield, formerly the provost at Wayne State University in Detroit, is UNLV’s 11th all-time president — and fifth in the past 10 years. He’s also the first Black president.
He spoke with the Las Vegas Sun about what lies ahead, including leading the university during the challenging times of the pandemic.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s it like taking over as president during the pandemic?
What’s so fascinating is I don’t know what to compare it to. These jobs are huge jobs to begin and there’s always challenges, now trying to equate it to a pandemic would be hard, but there’s budget challenges, there’s student things that go on, there’s always something. It’s never easy.
What has made it a little bit easier for me is that we had great leadership as I was coming, and so the big thing is transitioning.
What have you learned about UNLV now that you’re in town full time?
The incredible future that we have relative to health affairs or health sciences. I was, from the outside, saying, ‘Gosh, it’s great when different schools of health can work together.’ I think that we’ve been going in that direction, so I can be a fan and basically try to facilitate the growth of that.
One of the other things that is a big thing for me is student success, making sure students get across the finish line in terms of graduation. I’m very, very happy that everybody understands that that is one of our primary missions.
Some institutions think that students are on their own, but no person is a self-made man or woman, it takes other people around you and you’re influenced by your environment.
Every day I meet a faculty member and I’m just amazed at the thought, the scholarship, the commitment to doing excellence that they have.
Part of your position will be working with the Legislature. What are some of the legislative priorities you’re bringing into the position.
You’re going to give me a tough one, huh? The legislators that I’ve met — I’ve met a couple senators, absolutely fantastic people — and I think in that situation, in that relationship, my job is that I have to give them 50 different reasons why an institution of higher education is incredibly valuable to the city, to the county, to the state and to this region, particularly a research institution.
I think in higher ed sometimes, we’ve not done a good enough job in telling our story about how we make the people who are making a difference in the state and in the city and in the region. Having a research institution means that we’re teaching them how to problem solve. It’s that kind of conversation that I want to have with the legislators so that, when they have to make those really hard decisions about where you cut budgets, that they will really want to continue to support higher ed here in the state.
The pandemic has hit Nevada coffers hard, and lawmakers had to cut over $1 billion from the state budget this year. Are there talks ongoing about how UNLV may weather any cuts?
We’re talking about it, but we haven’t got a final plan. I can tell you from my perspective, that doesn’t mean that we retreat, that means that what we have to do is create some new opportunities. Whether that means connecting with industry or enticing more students to find out what an incredible place UNLV is because that brings in more tuition revenue.
A final exact formula for how you do it? It’s just that in everything we do we have to be mindful that every dollar counts and our job is to be able to educate the people of Las Vegas and the state and the region.
UNLV has had some COVID-19 cases since reopening, but there hasn’t been a large-scale outbreak. Do you think the university is doing enough to protect faculty and students on campus?
I was just outside and looking around, and I saw no one without a mask on. The other thing is, unlike some other schools that were very hopeful that they could figure out a way to handle having a large contingent of students on campus, 80% of our instruction is remote.
It’s not exact numbers, but it’s only around 20% of what we normally have on campus and that reduces the footprint, which is a mitigation strategy.
I had this wonderful opportunity a little while ago to meet one of our janitors. If it was appropriate to do I would have hugged her and said thank you. What they’re doing is making sure our facilities get cleaned as regularly as possible.
UNLV is consistently ranked as one of the most diverse schools, including in a recent U.S. News and World Report ranking. You’ve been open about your consideration of that as a strength. Could you detail why, and what is the best way to retain those diversity rankings?
If you bring people together from different perspectives, different backgrounds, different economic situations, living in different parts of the country, when you’re sitting around trying to learn and they participate in that, what you get is a richer learning environment.
Diversity actually makes for better learning a long as you have a learning environment that actually is one that is participatory, that actually shares what that diversity actually represents.
It’s good when we can have more international students because they bring an international perspective to conversations, discussions, problem solving, social issues and people's view of the world.
Earlier this year, a statue of Hey Reb! was taken down. Could you share your thoughts on the mascot?
It is an extremely difficult question. As somebody who is new, I saw what happened kind of from the outside. Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard lots of different perspectives. We’re going to have conversations as a community about what we think about it and ideas about how people have thought about it.
The Hey Reb! piece is not just that one statue. There’s a whole history behind it and there’s how people have thought about how it represents them or doesn’t’ represent them. We’re going to talk about that as a community and then think about a solution going forward as a community rather than one person deciding on it.
You’ve talked frequently about UNLV strengthening ties with the Clark County School District. Why is that important?
We get a good number of our students from Clark County, from the state, but particularly Clark County. It’s nothing but sensical for us to say if there’s something that we can do as community members, scholars and educators to be able to help, we have to be there. That’s just been the perspective that we’ve had.
Our former dean of education was a real superstar. I think the bar is really set high. We’re going to start a search for a new dean, but that’s going to be part of our future is working in our K-12 space.
One of the things that happens in a lot of spaces now is the idea of basically year-round school, but it’s really year-round experiences. We want to allow those students to be able to not be benefitted by what the K-12 support structure can do — we want to push them even further.
We bring kids to our campus and say, ‘Hey, this is a great place to keep learning. You’re welcome here.” Sometimes, when you’re a campus that sits in a big city you don’t get as many chances as you think to be able to do that.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Nothing more than just saying thank you for the welcome. This was a big and hard decision. I think the welcome that I’ve gotten here makes me feel like I’m going to be able to be a part of a community that’s strong, forward-thinking and positive.
I’m just looking forward to a lot of great years of being able to contribute anything and everything I can to try and make UNLV, the city of Las Vegas and the state just find ways that we can make our institution contribute to making things better.
