Finalists for University of Hawaii president to meet regents, pick likely coming soon

The two finalists to become the next president of the University of Hawaii — both mainland administrators with island ties — are scheduled for the first time to meet the full UH Board of Regents on Wednesday ahead of the regents’ decision that’s expected in the days that follow.

Julian Vasquez Heilig, 49, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Western Michigan University; and Wendy Hensel, 54, executive vice chancellor and university provost for The City University of New York, are scheduled to meet all 11 regents, who are likely to interview them separately in executive session during Wednesday’s regents’ meeting.

Their decision will determine who will become the university’s 16th president, replacing retiring President David Lassner, who has been part of the UH system for 47 years and president the last 14.

His replacement will oversee UH’s seven community colleges and three four-year universities on a budget of over $1 billion. UH also employs nearly 8,000 people while educating 46,000 students — touching families, sports fans and Hawaii’s economy in diverse ways unlike any other island institution.

In September and earlier this month, Vasquez Heilig and Hensel met separately with hundreds of people across four islands who wanted to hear how their backgrounds and experiences on the mainland will help lead UH.

Vasquez Heilig describes forums as ‘joyful’

Asked about the origins of his name, Vasquez Heilig told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that his first name, Julian, was inspired, in part, by Julian Bond, the civil rights activist from Georgia who served as the head of the NAACP.

“Vasquez” comes from his mother’s Latino side, many of whom were migrant farm workers in Texas who migrated to Michigan to pick cherries.

“Heilig,” he said, was the name of the North Carolina slave owner of his father’s ancestors. His grandfather, a member of the United Mine Workers of America union, worked in the Gold Hill area of North Carolina and later died of black lung disease.

Asked which cultures he identifies with, Vasquez Heilig initially said, “I’m multi-ethnic,” saying he’s comfortable in the Latino community and the African-­American community.

“At Christmas there’s tamales and there’s soul food.”

Of the new movie “A Million Miles Away,” Vasquez Heilig said, “I cried,” after seeing the inspirational story of the first migrant farm worker to fly aboard the Space Shuttle.

Vasquez Heilig spoke to the Star-Advertiser by cellphone while driving to an award ceremony where he was to be honored as one of Michigan’s 25 most influential Latinos. In September, he was similarly honored as one of Michigan’s top 20 African-Americans.

“I was the first person of color to serve as provost at my institution,” he said. “I carry that on my shoulders.”

In late May and early June, Vasquez Heilig was on Oahu attending the 36th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education at the Hawaii Convention Center.

Later, Alphonso Braggs — president of the Honolulu chapter of the NAACP — reached out to him and said he wanted to nominate Vasquez Heilig for the UH presidency.

“He told me a person of color hadn’t served since ‘Fudge’ (former UH President Fujio ‘Fudge’ Matsuda),” Vasquez Heilig said. “I said I would be willing and then a couple of weeks ago they said I was a semifinalist. If you look at my record, I didn’t think it was a long shot.”

For presidents of other universities, “most of your work is focused on donors and sports, and those are important to Hawaii, too,” Vasquez Heilig said. “But you also have the multi-­ethnic nature of the institution, as well.”

Vasquez Heilig has cousins on Oahu and a sister who has worked in emergency rooms for Kaiser Permanente and The Queen’s Medical Center, and he has been visiting Hawaii long before he applied to become the next UH president.

The trips to Hawaii, he said, “made me appreciate and understand how special the place is.”

After he and his wife spent most of their lives convincing his children to attend college in Michigan, Vasquez Heilig said his two teenagers are now excited about the possibility of enrolling at UH.

He described his forums at UH campuses, overall, as “joyful” with a “focus on the culture of leadership and developing a positive culture.”

For the livestreamed UH-Hilo event, Vasquez Heilig said his supporters in Michigan attended a watch party while wearing lei.

During the forums, Vasquez Heilig said he was frequently asked about what he has accomplished as a “leader” at Western Michigan.

“I said, ‘nothing.’ I talked about all the work we did as a team.”

He then quoted Bo Schembechler, the late, former football coach at the University of Michigan who preached, “The team, the team, the team.”

Vasquez Heilig characterized his similar philosophy as “part of the next generation of leadership.”

“People can read when you’re authentic and what you care about,” he said. “I feel like with a lot of those conversations, we landed in a good place. I shared their values when people ask me that question.”

The forums required sometimes getting up at 4 a.m. and wrapping up by 9 p.m. and, along with the interisland travel, was so time-consuming that he regretted having to turn down invitations to meet with some groups.

Vasquez Heilig proudly talks about progress at Western Michigan, including student retention rates, and said he would like to see UH do more to take advantage of technology to track students’ progress and head off problems.

According to the publication “Diverse: Issues In Higher Education,” Western Michigan data showed an 81.1 percent retention rate, the highest since records were tracked at the university in 1991.

And Black student enrollment increased 2.3 percent while Hispanic enrollment jumped 4.7 percent.

During the Hawaii forums, Vasquez Heilig said he was repeatedly asked about the historical legacy that Native Hawaiians have faced and whether he could be trusted.

“I talked about the work we did with Indigenous populations” and “said, ‘Call the Indigenous community and Native community and they can tell you the story of our work together.’”

“I heard President Lassner did that and I really admire that,” Vasquez Heilig said. “I heard he’s really present at many student and faculty events and other functions.”

Vasquez Heilig also was asked his thoughts about restoring the position of UH-Manoa chancellor. He said his background qualifies him to serve as both Manoa chancellor and UH president, as has sometimes been the case with previous presidents.

Ultimately, such a decision would be up to the regents.

“My responsibility is the what-ifs for the regents,” he said. “If we go this direction these are the challenges. If we go that way, these are the challenges.”

Vasquez Heilig said he also was frequently asked how he would run the university as an outsider and said he would lean into the expertise and experience of people throughout the UH system.

“Lassner’s a lifer but the organization has other lifers too,” Vasquez Heilig said. “It is key to creating a synergy between the institutional knowledge and just creative thinking.”

He said he was pleasantly surprised to learn that 80 percent of UH community college students transfer to UH’s four-year universities and that the community colleges were better preparing them for university life compared to students who started at UH’s four-year universities.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “But my question was, ‘How do we get the other 20 percent?”

The answer, Vasquez Heilig believes, is for UH to use technology and data to better track each students’ progress and issues and address them before students get sidetracked from school, either academically or for financial reasons that lead them to drop out.

“When students run into an issue, a lot of time students don’t know where to turn or who to call,” he said. “There is a recipe for this. We’re able to address issues before they escalate and after they escalate.”

Hensel impressed by ‘committed and caring people’

Like Vasquez Heilig, Hensel cited her similar approach using technology and artificial intelligence to track students’ progress to keep them focused on their education.

At Georgia State University, where Hensel served as provost before moving on to CUNY, she said, “We looked at 8,000 data points that we used to predict some type of issue, whether it was financial aid, homelessness, food insecurity or struggling in courses that were not at the correct level for that student.”

Some 20 percent of students who had enrolled at Georgia State “never showed up” to attend school, she said.

“That was overwhelmingly true for our poorest ZIP codes” where many of the students, like in Hawaii, “were the first in their families to go to college.”

Georgia State used chatbots that many students preferred to get information, sometimes late at night covering a wide range of problematic issues. That triggered a “red flag,” which required “follow-up,” Hensel said.

As a result, the so-called “summer melt” phenomenon at Georgia State — in which students do not return for the fall semester or never show up in the first place — was reduced 20 percent, she said.

She characterized herself as “passionate” about the mission of higher education, especially helping diverse and under-privileged students — often the first in their families to attend college — to navigate the process to become successful.

Like CUNY, Hawaii high school students who move into the UH system “can literally transform generations of their families, and that is the University of Hawaii,” Hensel said.

She and her husband three years ago bought a two-bedroom townhouse along the Kohala Coast of Hawaii island and visit with or without their four adult children.

They chose to plant roots on the Big Island, in particular, “because we just love it,” Hensel said. “We love the incredible diversity of places and the rich Hawaii history. It’s palpable there. I like to become part of the culture.”

Whenever she comes to Hawaii, Hensel has always visited UH campuses, “long before this job ever came open.”

“I was really impressed,” Hensel said. “UH has a reputation for some of the best community colleges in the country.”

During the community forums, Hensel also was impressed by “how committed and caring people are about the university. Some people went to more than one forum. That kind of commitment is not typical, and that’s the kind of community I want to be involved with. That was a wonderful thing to take away.”

At the same time, Hensel said, “there were sometimes not easy conversations. But that’s how we get places as human beings.”

During her Sept. 24 visit to UH-Hilo, Hensel was especially humbled at how warmly she was greeted by music, dancers, an oli and a lei made from flowers growing around the campus.

“I was almost brought to tears,” she said. “I could not have been more touched.”

“I’m passionate about Hawaii,” Hensel said. “Many of us came for the beauty and fell in love with the spirit. There’s such a fear of saying the wrong thing in this environment. But it’s too important not to begin as a student of the place. I’m in higher education because I love to learn.”

If the regents select her as UH’s next president, Hensel said the job would “literally combine the work that I love in the place that I love that fits my experience.”

Asked how she plans to fit in as an outsider overseeing such a vast system that touches so many aspects of island life, Hensel said, “people have concerns and that’s absolutely fair and it’s important for people who are invested in the community. Bringing in an unknown quantity is a leap of faith when there’s so much at stake. It’s an awesome responsibility. I hope there is some sense of who I am. But trust is something that has to be earned.”

When she was promoted from dean of the Georgia State University law school to provost, Hensel said she “wore out multiple pairs of shoes going to the people asking the question, ‘How can I serve you?’”

Hensel did the same thing at CUNY, she said.

With a CUNY system sprawled across 25 campuses, Hensel said, “no one had ever done that before. But I wanted to understand the people I serve.”

To help UH, Hensel plans to further reach out to strengthen partnerships in and outside UH including industries and government, which can sometimes be difficult because, she said, “higher education is slow to change.”

At CUNY, she said, “we did a lot with that.”

Asked how she would address the politics at the state Legislature surrounding the position, Hensel said she’s ready for any kind of welcome she receives at the state Capitol.

“No one has ever said that New York politics is gentle,” she said. “But I begin with the premise that it is absolutely legitimate for the government to have oversight. We have to be partners because we have the same mission to take good care of the people in your care. So I remain an eternal optimist.”

Overall, Hensel said the transition from Lassner to his successor represents “an exciting moment of leadership change, which can be a reset.”

She still uses an Atlanta, Ga., 404 area code for her cellphone even though she now works in New York.

Asked if she’ll continue to use the same Georgia phone number — or switch to an 808 area code — if she becomes the next UH president, Hensel said, “I promise I’ll change it.”