“You are worthy of your dreams.”
This is my unchanging message to my students as their president, never more important than during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
West Virginia University at Parkersburg, because of its mission and location, is often the only higher education option for our students, most of whom come from a rural, economically bleak beginning, many of whom are first-generation and need frequent reminders of their worth.
To succeed, they must trust that their president believes in them and is willing to give as much as I require.
If I believe in their dreams, actually and not just rhetorically, then never has my call to servant leadership been timelier. If you believe, then never has our responsibility to rise to the challenge of leading been more urgent. Never will we need to focus more clearly on one skill—empathy—for without it, we will not remain relevant to our students.
I do not want them to see me as an unapproachable, mythological figure separated by multiple doors and several assistants, a detached representation of the “other” in a suit and tie, wearing the college medallion at commencement and not knowing any of the people to whom he is awarding degrees.
I want to hear their stories. For them to be willing to share, I must simultaneously step off of my pedestal of privilege while lifting them up to it, if only for a moment, if only to give them a glimpse of what hard work and the sacrifices of the elders created in my own life, a first-generation student born into multi-generational poverty. I have to humanize myself before them, to become a tangible and realistic role model, a role model not only of things done right, but of things done very wrong and the lessons learned in failure.
