Cullinan completes busy first year as EWU President

The Big Sky Conference's President's Trophy for academic and athletic excellence sits appropriately on the coffee table in Dr. Mary Cullinan's office.

While it centers on athletics, the award represents the overall mission to which Cullinan has dedicated much of her first year on the job.

"I would say that the work we have been doing on student success for me is the most important." Cullinan said.

Cullinan began her term as the 26th president at Eastern on Aug. 1, 2014, taking over for the retiring Dr. Rodolfo Arévalo. She was formerly president of Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Ore.

While Eastern has fully embraced Cullinan's mission, "It's not a kind of goal that gets done (quickly), it's always a work in progress," she said.

The mission is a complex process with many moving parts including focusing on advising, mentoring and generally whatever is needed to help students get through to graduation, Cullinan explained.

Finding the money for college - even though the Washington State Legislature's recent budget cut tuition at EWU - is also part of the effort.

"We're starting a huge scholarship fundraising campaign," Cullinan said. "All these things are coming together with all parts of the university thinking about student success."

Eastern will continue to focus significant energy on what Cullinan called "the underserved student," who she described as those who are first generation and Pell Grant recipients, whose funds need not be repaid. That part of the student population was a priority for Cullinan when she interviewed for the job.

"A lot of times they are supporting themselves financially," Cullinan said. "We need to have the processes in place that make it as easy as possible for them."

Cullinan also noted how a new program for incoming freshmen ought to simplify their process.

"We're pre-populating their schedules," she said. Instead of students going through the process of handpicking their classes and times, it's, "Here's your schedule," Cullinan said. The data to put the schedules together was arrived at through consultation with advisers and Cullinan said the point is, "It's general education."

With Eastern's enrollment racing towards another record number, there's also an effort in the works to manage this growth. "We have just been growing, which is wonderful," Cullinan said. "But we haven't been growing strategically."

That means arriving at the right amounts of undergrads, graduate, out of state and international students, among other categories. That has to be penciled out and then strategies need to be drawn up to get to those goals.

"We've just been saying great, let's just grow 2-percent per year," Cullinan said. "It's worked fine but it's not a long-term strategy."

Cullinan would like to see an increase in the international student population. "We want to globalize the campus," she said, carrying on the effort of her predecessor, Arevalo, who made specific inroads to Brazil.

"We're developing a strategy, we don't want to go to just one or two countries, we want to have a diversity of countries," she said. Cullinan wants to see a portfolio of different nations, not unlike a solid retirement investment plan.

Besides attracting a more diverse student population from abroad, infusing more international students will potentially expose domestic enrollees to cultures they may never have an opportunity to travel to experience.

While there is an emphasis for Cullinan on faraway shores, she also addressed how she views things just down the street from Showalter Hall with the city of Cheney.

Most recently Eastern has ruffled some community feathers by moving graduation exercises to Spokane and the school is exploring contracting police dispatch services with Spokane County and away from the Cheney Police Department.

"I've been very pleased with our relationship all year," Cullinan said. "I have regular meetings with Mayor (Tom) Trulove."

There are more areas - "innumerable," Cullinan said - where the two entities cooperate and collaborate. "I am very happy that Mayor Trulove can pick up the phone and call me, I can pick up the phone and call him," she said.

"I am sorry if there are any blips between us, we're like a brother and sister trying to get along," Cullinan said.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.