UNLV president relishes Rebels’ shared sense of community

UNLV President Keith Whitfield has watched enrollment at the university soar to new heights, growing from 30,660 students in fall 2022 to an expected 32,000 students for the fall 2024 semester that started last month.

Whitfield has also seen the university at its lowest, when a shooter walked onto the campus on Dec. 6, 2023, killed three professors and wounded another.

It’s been almost 10 months since the event that rocked UNLV’s campus, and recovery efforts are still ongoing, but there’s lots of hope — not just from Whitfield, but across campus, he said.

“I think that we’re not there yet, but we’re Rebels, we’re doing well,” Whitfield told the Sun last week while sitting inside Frank and Estella Beam Hall, which reopened Monday for the first time since last year’s shooting. “When I compare us to what’s happened at other campuses, I think that part of it is even as an urban campus, we have a sense of community, and that community is what’s going to help us actually get over the hump and for people to be able to get better.”

The Sun sat down with Whitfield to discuss the upcoming academic year. Here are some highlights of our talk:

It’s been almost five years since you took the position here at UNLV. What does it mean to you to be a Rebel?

You start to (realize) how special a place this is, and how smart our students are, and how dedicated and hardworking they are. … Being a Rebel means doing it differently; being a Rebel means making sure that we look out for each other. That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to tell folks and to share with folks is that when we start acting more and more like a community — like a close-knit community — the stronger we are on everything, for our mental health, for our physical health, for the classes we have to do, everything. I think Rebels have been doing that.

With a new school year comes new priorities for the university. What is UNLV’s administration going to be focusing on and pushing for students this year?

We’re going to be building a facility in our library that’s going to allow … a different kind of learning. It’s almost learning by doing, and it’s also that when you’re then learning in the metaverse, you’re not paying attention to your phone; you’re not talking to the person sitting next to you; (and) you’re really engaged in it.

We’re trying to figure out another way to be able to make it so that students’ time here is just maximized; that you get everything you can out of every single course that you take and learning experience that you have.

We’re going to be opening — full bore, full blast — our financial literacy and wellness institute.

One of the things that is incredible about this university is that we’re in, like, the top 10% in the country that take people from the lowest social mobility levels to the highest. I got excited about that, and hung on. Then, I thought about it (and) said, well, so what happens in 10 years, though, if you don’t know how to manage insurance; if you don’t know how to manage a budget? If you know, trying to figure out which application you use. Thinking about that makes it so that those gains that people make, they’re able to keep. That’s part of what’s behind it. But also because college costs money, and the better you can do in terms of making financial decisions, the better you’re going to be.

UNLV has had record-high enrollments in the past year, even amid some of the tragedy it has faced. What’s making students want to choose or come back to the university?

If the numbers hold, which I hope (and) think that they will, it’ll put us over 32,000.

What’s interesting about this is that nationwide, what you’re seeing is kind of a dropoff in enrollment, and I’m just making sure that anybody (who) wants to come, they can come to UNLV and enjoy themselves. We have a goal, ultimately, by 2030 to be at 40,000 students.

It’s more than a number. It’s really making sure that if students are interested and passionate about doing something, getting a business degree, that we encourage them to do it, and we provide all the support that they need to be able to get across the finish line — the graduation finish line — and be able to achieve that.

In your 2023 State of the University address, you mentioned there were increased efforts to attract students inside and outside of Nevada and the United States. How has that effort been going?

We’re a good deal in a lot of ways for what you get, which is an incredible education. It’s a good deal, and I do think that we are seeing — I forgot what our out of state numbers look like — but we’re seeing more graduate students, and we’re seeing more international students.

It’s not like we’re going to be 70% from out of state, that’s not who we are, and that’s not what we’re going to be.

We want to see some more foreign students come in; we definitely want to see some more out-of-state students come in, but the “N” (in UNLV) is for Nevada, and that’s what’s always going to be our heaviest piece.

Campuses and universities have been the sites of major protests in the past few months. Although UNLV didn’t see any violence or encampments like in other states, is the administration preparing if conflicts do occur on campus — especially as we get closer to the election?

The protests here, when you compare them, they’ve been relatively benign. What we’re trying to do is to make sure that we encourage them to be respectful; that there’s lines that have to be drawn about what you say and how you say what you’re talking about. I listen and say, well, there’s points that you guys can agree on. That’s what we need to figure out how to do, and so that’s another piece of it. In terms of their behavior at protests and things, there’s ways you can do it right, there’s ways you can do it wrong and we don’t want to squash anybody’s First Amendment rights in terms of freedom of speech, but it’s kind of (like) that you don’t yell fire in a crowded building.

In 2022, there was lots of talk about the university creating a sort of “University District” across Maryland Parkway with the businesses there. Does UNLV have any plans to further develop and sort of absorb some of the nearby shopping centers to create that student-centered district?

It continues to move forward. In addition to us making connections with retail connectors, we’ve also thought that that’s likely going to be where our growth is, on the other side of Maryland Parkway. We own Rebel Plaza now; we own the (University) Gateway Building; we own the (Public Education Foundation) Building; and that’s going to be a part of where we’ll grow and make it more of an extended, walkable community where things will be. I’m hoping that what we can do is, in some ways, encourage and better connect with some of the folks that are in some of the strip malls that are across the way, so that they’re able to financially benefit and our students are actually able to get the kinds of resources, food (or) whatever it is on that side of Maryland Parkway as well.

We’re a (Carnegie) Research-One, urban-serving university, and part of that urban piece means that we need to meld and connect with our environment. … What we’ve been trying to do is to figure out if there is a way maybe with our 2,000 acres — we’ve got 2,000 acres up north — we could create a place where students could be and living in housing. Dorms are great, and individual units are different, and especially if you’re a graduate student, that might be something that’s more attractive to them.

On the sports side of things, it looks like UNLV football is in top shape with one of the best teams in the program’s history. How is this team really building community and getting students further involved?

Love the question because I think our coach is doing an incredible job, and it’s not just on the field. I just had breakfast with him last week, and I clearly said, with the name, image, likeness, and with the portal, it makes it very different in terms of how students are recruited and come to different universities. He says, “We think we’re doing well, you know. We lost our quarterback and we got a couple of great people for quarterbacks, and so we’ve got high hopes.”

But the thing that I want everybody to remember — this is something that I want us to really get — is that this is not your team when we win, this is your team whether we win or lose. It’s always that you’re a Rebel (and) you should always be excited about it because, as we’ve seen from even last year, sometimes we might have started a little behind, but guess what? Actually, good coaching, great team.

It’s so interesting. I was watching a Raiders game, and I felt like the audience — the fans — actually influenced that game. I think that that’s very, very true, and it’s one of the things that I haven’t figured out exactly how we can do it, but we’re going to continue to encourage students to come to the game. Students get to come to arguably the best college stadium in the country, (so) we should be just full of them.

Part of you understanding what it really means to be a Rebel is to go to athletic events every now and then. They can be fun, and people are laughing and joking, and that’s exciting. So we’re really trying to encourage students to make sure that that’s a part of their college life.

One of the ways UNLV was trying to help students and community members get to games was by allowing the Boring Company to build a Vegas Loop station near campus to transport them to Allegiant Stadium. How’s that progressing?

They picked a different site now. (It) works better in some ways, and we’ll see. You know, that is wonderful, 21st-century technology for how you do that, that you dig under the ground and then you can go everywhere you want to go. We’re trying to do whatever we can to be able to help them (and) be able to provide a resource for the community.

In November, Nevada voters will once again see Question 1 on their ballots, which involves the Nevada System of Higher Education and its Board of Regents. Does UNLV have any sort of stance on the ballot question?

Absolutely not. My biggest thing is that we’ve got an election year, and that we want to just encourage people (to vote). This is America; one of the greatest things that we have is the ability to vote. I’m not partisan on any side. People should just vote. We should vote so that the things that we have, and the people that we have (in office) represent what the will of the people is. And so that’s the most important piece of it.