Again in September, Western Michigan College—a public analysis establishment situated within the southwestern nook of the state—launched its fall 2024 enrollment and retention numbers, a lot to the delight of the college’s provost, Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig.
For the primary time in a decade, year-over-year enrollment elevated on the college and the general retention fee was 81.1%, the best reported for the reason that college started monitoring the metric in 1991.
However the numbers additionally informed an essential story about underrepresented minority enrollment on the booming college, which boasts a pupil inhabitants of greater than 17,000. Black pupil enrollment, for instance, went up 2.3% over the earlier yr, and there was a bump of 4.7% in Hispanic enrollment.
“We made some massive features in African American retention final yr, so we’ve got a extremely excessive bar,” Vasquez Heilig informed me again in August—previous to the discharge of the census information. “The truth that we had a rise of three% final yr, we don’t take that without any consideration.”
Western Michigan College Provost Dr. Julian Vasquez HeiligLori Gottschling
For Vasquez Heilig—a distinguished public coverage researcher who has carved out a nationwide fame each in and outdoors educational circles for his scholarship on fairness and innovation—the pendulum at WMU is swinging in the best route.
It took a university-wide method to zero in on alternatives to rebound the enrollment numbers, notably within the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, which paralyzed schools and universities throughout the nation. It additionally helped that, shortly earlier than Vasquez Heilig arrived on the college in 2022, WMU obtained an nameless donation within the quantity of $550 million—the most important single present to a public college—to assist advance this essential work.
The Empowering Futures Present was earmarked to fund scholarships, advance medical schooling and analysis, help school experience, enhance athletic competitiveness and make doable quite a few student-centered initiatives.
Alternative to make a distinction
For the 49-year-old public scholar who has spent a lot of his profession exploring points associated to variety, fairness, and inclusion and anti-racism management throughout the Okay-12 and better schooling panorama, coming to WMU was a chance to assist propel the 120-year establishment ahead.
“We’re very lucky to be one of many only a few analysis universities to have two individuals of colour main it and that’s exceptional,” says Vasquez Heilig who’s each Latino and Black. The college’s president, Dr. Edward B. Montgomery—an achieved economist who served within the Clinton and Obama administrations—is African American. “Now that we’re beginning to get the outcomes, we’re in a position to inform our social justice story.”
Fairness has lengthy been part of Western Michigan College’s DNA. Take a stroll by campus and also you’ll discover seen markers of how the minoritized group formed the establishment courting again many years.
On a current tour by campus, Vasquez Heilig factors out Elson S. Floyd Corridor—residence to the Faculty of Engineering and Utilized Sciences facility— named in honor of the college’s sixth and first African American president to guide WMU. From 1998 to 2003, Floyd served the college earlier than occurring to guide the College of Missouri and Washington State College.
Throughout campus, there’s the college’s faculty for pupil success, which is known as after the primary Black alumna, Dr. Merze Tate, who went on to develop into an achieved creator and educator. After which there’s the college’s Walker Institute for the Research of Race and Ethnic Relations named after Dr. Lewis Walker, the college’s first Black professor.
“We actually stand on the shoulders of those that come earlier than us,” says Vazquez Heilig, whose mom is a Bronco, having graduated from WMU with a grasp’s diploma. “We really feel a particular accountability to satisfy that.”
Sporting certainly one of his modern newsboy’s caps which have develop into aside of his signature model—Vasquez Heilig delights in exhibiting off the newly renovated buildings that adorn the campus, together with the coed middle —which he says illustrates the college’s key priorities and its dedication to its college students.
On at the present time, he’s conducting back-to-back conferences with faculty directors and college to debate pupil outcomes and an entire host of initiatives together with methods to broaden the college’s twin enrollment program with space excessive faculties.
On the job
As the college’s chief educational officer, Vasquez Heilig arguably has an important job on campus: to supervise WMU’s educational planning and technique, together with oversight of all educational applications and requirements for accreditation, in collaboration with about 800 school and about 700 workers.
“This job requires being on 24-hours a day,” he says. “I don’t count on our workers to be on 24-hours a day until it’s one thing actually pressing, as a result of I would like my crew to have the ability to get pleasure from evenings with their households, however once we get to the workplace, it’s full velocity forward.”
And over the course of those previous two years, Vasquez Heilig—who got here of age in Lansing, Michigan, after incomes a bachelor’s and grasp’s diploma on the College of Michigan earlier than occurring to earn a Ph.D. at Stanford College—has been shifting shortly to spice up WMU’s fame and standing each in and outdoors Michigan.
“It’s not simply concerning the information, however the actual tales and the actual individuals this work impacts,” Vasquez Heilig says of the mission-work that establishments like WMU do to assist remodel and maintain communities.
Whereas some provosts at different establishments are usually internally centered of their method to the job, such has not been the case at WMU. Vasquez Heilig has been intentional in partaking with outdoors stakeholders starting from the Chamber of Commerce to the native NAACP. That technique has confirmed profitable and has led to the creation of latest partnerships and direct pipelines that now permit for direct engagement with the group, particularly Michigan’s Native American elders. On the nationwide stage, he serves on a variety of boards together with the Schott Basis Governing Board and the American Affiliation of Hispanics in Larger Training (AAHHE).
“I meet with superintendents all around the state and go to faculties all around the state,” says Vasquez Heilig. “I don’t simply do the inner work; I actually do benefit from the group engagement work too.”
Shortly after Vasquez Heilig arrived to WMU, he created a pupil advisory committee, which he convenes bi-weekly, to speak with college students about no matter they’re curious about. And regardless of a grueling schedule that has taken him abroad lately to strengthen partnerships with faculties in China and Japan, he frequently makes time to have interaction in a recreation of basketball with an everyday group of worldwide college students or to snap selfies with pupil leaders.
The lifetime of a scholar
Vasquez Heilig’s early curiosity in coverage work started throughout his days on the College of Michigan when he labored as an undergraduate analysis assistant for Dr. Sylvia Hurtado, who was then an assistant professor at Michigan however is now a Distinguished Professor of Training at UCLA.
After finishing his research at UMich, Vasquez Heilig took a job working for Dr. Rod Paige, who on the time was Superintendent of the Houston Impartial Colleges District in Texas. Paige ultimately went on to develop into U.S. Secretary of Training underneath President George W. Bush and have become the architect of The No Baby Left Behind, which was carried out in Houston lengthy earlier than it grew to become nationwide coverage.
“There have been loads of issues occurring in Houston that didn’t add as much as me,” says Vasquez Heilig. “I made a decision I wished to return to graduate college as a result of I wished to investigate these insurance policies.”
An encounter with Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, the famend schooling researcher at Stanford College, led to Vasquez Heilig being employed as her researcher whereas finishing his Ph.D. at Stanford.
On the encouragement of Darling-Hammond, Vasquez Heilig utilized for a school place on the College of Texas at Austin, the place, over an eight-year tenure there, he received widespread recognition and accolades for his groundbreaking analysis on academic insurance policies and their affect on college students of colour all through the state of Texas.
It was additionally the start of his rise by the academy.
Two years after gaining tenure at UT- Austin, Vasquez Heilig was recruited to California State College in Sacramento to develop into director and professor of Academic Management and Coverage Research, the place he was supplied full professor.
“Folks thought I used to be loopy to depart Texas,” recollects Vasquez Heilig, who says that, whereas he loved his expertise there, he welcomed the chance to be taught extra a couple of minority serving establishment and get hands-on expertise working inside a system of schools.
It was throughout these 5 years that Vasquez Heilig grew to become concerned with the California NAACP, lending his experience to serving to form coverage within the Golden State and rising points that have been making their approach into the nationwide discourse.
In 2018, he was named dean of the Faculty of Training on the College of Kentucky, the place he strategically elevated pupil enrollment by 63 p.c and led 3,000 college students, workers and college in a university that touted a $25 million funds. Beneath his management, first-year college students majoring in instructor preparation applications grew by 275%, and he was intentional about recruiting school of colour to the faculty and serving to to diversify the variety of schooling majors.
Given the success in his earlier positions, it’s no shock to those that know him finest that Vasquez Heilig was named certainly one of two finalists in September to develop into the subsequent president of the College of Hawaii’s 10-campus public greater schooling system. College officers count on to announce their decide later this month.
“From the primary day that I met him, I may see that Julian was very dedicated to righting the social injustices and making certain that individuals transfer ahead,” says Darling-Hammond, who’s professor emerita and founding president of the Studying Coverage Institute at Stanford College.
She says that a lot of the analysis that Vasquez Heilig engaged in together with her throughout these early years at Stanford centered on how lecturers may finest help schoolchildren within the classroom.
“He can actually see what’s going to be problematic and is deeply dedicated to addressing these points in methods which are very constructive and productive,” she says, crediting him with serving to to diversify instructor schooling and helping his colleagues to develop into higher students and researchers. “He all the time leaves a spot stronger than when he got here in.”
