Growing enrollment is job No. 1 at The Evergreen State College, new leaders say
Fifty years ago, the experiment known as The Evergreen State College — a college that didn’t set out to teach single courses of study, but to include a number of different fields into each course offering known as interdisciplinary studies — graduated its first class.
Fifty years later, the college has embarked on a new experiment, hiring not one leader for the college, but two in the form of interim President John Carmichael, 55, and Executive Vice President, Dexter Gordon, 66.
Carmichael has long been associated with Evergreen as both an undergraduate and graduate student, as well as most recently the vice president of finance and operations for the college. Gordon spent nearly 20 years at the University of Puget Sound where he served as director of the African American studies program and was the founding director of its Race and Pedagogy Institute.
The two were brought together over the summer after the three presidential finalists to replace former president George Bridges withdrew their names from consideration. Carmichael and Gordon now are focused on what has been Evergreen’s biggest challenge of late: growing enrollment.
Fall enrollment at Evergreen was 2,116 students, down 7 percent from last year; the college enrolled more than 4,000 students a decade ago.
One new idea for the college is a tentatively named School of Professional Studies, which would offer a series of short-term certificate programs for non-traditional students looking for a focused course of study that could quickly be put to use in the working world.
The college is still building the program, and it needs to be approved by the Board of Trustees, but it introduced three programs this fall in audio production, transformational leadership and anthro-zoology. If approved by the board, the number of certificate programs could grow to as many as 15 by next fall, Carmichael said.
Other potential certificate courses: business administration and entrepreneurship, environmental solutions and computer science.
In Thurston County alone, there are tens of thousands of people who have earned some college credit but have no degree or credential to show for it, Carmichael said.
“This is an opportunity to retool and focus in that direction,” he said.
The Olympian talked to Carmichael and Gordon about their work so far.
Question: What have you shared with each other about Evergreen and your impressions of Evergreen?
Carmichael: The Evergreen model of education is almost unique in the landscape of higher education, and it still works. Fifty years later, what we can see is that it is a successful way of engaging students, and the model I’m talking about involves a deep commitment to interdisciplinary education, so we’re layering different disciplines and being eclectic about the disciplines we bring to real-world questions. And what we know is that it engages students deeply and leads to deep learning.
That model sometimes get pegged as though it’s for certain students who won’t make it in other educational settings. It is true we reach students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach higher education, but it’s not true that model is only applicable to a small group of people. On the contrary, we are teaching and learning this way because it’s the way the world is organized. It’s how people’s brains have evolved to understand and work in the world. We are a public college that can serve all students.
Gordon: I have shared with him that I’m surprised that Evergreen is challenged the way it is with student enrollment because I think Evergreen is uniquely positioned to meet this moment, a moment when we’re talking about education being open to a range of demographic groups that have historically been outside the frame. Evergreen has been doing this work for a long time. I find in Evergreen the kind of academic home that I want to embrace and champion. Evergreen promotes the kind of education that takes community seriously.
Q: What did you want to make very clear to each other?
Carmichael: That enrollment loss over an extended period of time creates financial challenges and political challenges, and that it’s a significant piece of work to address.
Gordon: He was clear about that and the implications for the college budget. But given the challenges, I asked, what is possible? For me, I look at Evergreen and see that it was created at the end of the 1960s, a great period of change, and yet it was successful. My sense is that this is an institution that has in its DNA a willingness to look directly at challenges and say OK, what are we going to do?
Q: Is the college going to merge with another school?
Carmichael: The college is not merging, but we’re in an area where we are actively trying to engage partners in this community to do good work together.
Gordon: My response is to say that in this moment we want to show that Evergreen is an asset to the state. We are stabilizing ourselves and readying ourselves for the next 50 years.
Q: Will Evergreen change its name to The Evergreen State University?
Carmichael: None of us have the authority to change the name because it requires legislative action, and the board has not endorsed changing the name. We’re not going to change the name as part of a marketing, re-branding thing. If we’re a substantially different institution in the future, and a different name is needed to capture that, I wouldn’t categorically rule it out. We would need the board to tell us to put together a legislative proposal and we’re not doing that for the 2022 session.
Q: How about expanding graduate programs?
Carmichael: I think that’s well within the realm of possibilities — a master’s degree in fine arts program, for instance. That may happen in the future, but in terms of business model, that’s a harder proposition, and so it’s not the first thing we’re going to work on, but expansion could be down the road.
Gordon: The one area of growth has been graduate programs, so it makes sense that Evergreen would look at that and so we will.
Q: What do you attribute the enrollment decline to?
Carmichael: I sometimes say it’s the Murder on the Orient Express because there are a lot of suspects. Liberal arts colleges have been challenged in recent years to demonstrate their value proposition. Nationally, higher education institutions are operating at 75 percent capacity and we’re evidence of that.
COVID-19 is another significant contributor and it has had an uneven impact across institutions. College and universities that serve low-income, older students, students of color — in other words, our students — have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
Q: How much of that decline do you attribute to the Day of Absence controversy?
Carmichael: What the college experienced in 2017 was a foretaste of what was experienced much more broadly by the country a few years later. There was a period of time when we felt unique in this regard. Now, it feels like what we experienced is part of a larger picture. It’s not really specific to Evergreen.
I think it set up a couple of challenging years for us in terms of student recruitment and definitely raised questions about the college’s reputation. The way you deal with questions about reputation is doing good work over a sustained period of time. Four years later, I think we are working down that set of questions. I hear about it occasionally, but I don’t believe it is a top-of-mind issue for students who are choosing Evergreen or a course of study.
Q: What message would you like to share?
Carmichael: Part of it is gratitude. We have a lot of people pulling for us in this community, and it’s comforting to know we have a lot of support in the community. The other thing I want people to know: We do have a plan for the future of the college, and we will be here for the next 50 years, and part of that plan is re-engaging in the communities we serve and the communities that support us.
Gordon: John says “gratitude.” I would add to that “vision and foresight.” This is a moment when Evergreen wants to say as an institution: We are an asset to this state, and we want to say to our community, let’s lean into this together. We’ve got to share this little blue planet together. We like educating you alongside your peers who will be different from you, and that difference is part of what Evergreen wants to highlight. We want to acknowledge, affirm, examine and to celebrate difference because we believe it’s our strength.
This story was originally published December 12, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
