Looking around President Neil Kerwin’s office, it is clear that he is proud of the University he has called home for more than 40 years. The room is filled with historic University artifacts, including the federal proclamation deeming AU a university.
Kerwin’s pride in his school becomes even more apparent when he talks about AU, and why he chose to attend in the first place.
“I always felt from the moment I got here that it was a place where serious work was being done, and I wanted to be a part of it,” he said.
Kerwin has been at the University since 1967- first as a student, then professor, provost and now president. When he first applied with a desire to major in political science, Kerwin said he was initially impressed by AU’s strong reputation in the field.
“I was interested in politics- my father was involved in politics when I was a kid. And I knew I wanted to study government,” he said. “It made a great deal of sense to study in a place that had a strong reputation for political science.”
“I always felt from the moment I got here that it
it was a place where serious work was being done,
and I wanted to be a part of it."
It is this strong scholarly reputation, as well as an engaged and proactive community, that has kept Kerwin at AU for almost 40 years, which began immediately after he completed graduate school at Johns Hopkins University.
“The first job I applied for out of grad school was here at AU- I had a great affection for the institution,” he said. “I was given an opportunity to work with men and women who had provided me with the foundation in political science that really helped me decide that’s what I wanted to do for a career. So there was something very special about coming back to AU and coming back to Washington.”
Kerwin said the engagement of the campus community has continued to impress him.
“I’ve always been impressed with the energy, the willingness to take on hard problems [and] face them head on,” he said. “You’re never going to satisfy everybody, not everybody’s always going to be happy, but it’s never been a place to me that shrunk from difficult decisions and difficult situations.”
Many of these tough decisions involve campus issues, especially ones that directly affect students. This past spring, one of those issues was sexual assault on campus.
When a string of emails from the unaffiliated student group Epsilon Iota involving sexual assault and rape were leaked last semester, Kerwin said he knew this was a problem the University needed to tackle.
The administration’s first act was to update the student conduct code as well as adding another sexual assault prevention coordinator and victim advocate and other measures, all of which were laid out by Vice President of Student Life Gail Hanson in three summer memos sent to students, The Eagle "previously reported":http://www.theeagleonline.com/article/2014/08/campuswide-memo-outlines-new-sexual-assault-prevention-measures.
“We’ve made it plain through communications that Vice President Hanson has issued [that] we didn’t see this as a one-time response,” Kerwin said. “The goal has to be elimination, and there’s only one good way to do that that I’m aware of, and that’s educating people and making people understand that there are serious consequences for inappropriate behavior.”
When he first saw the emails though, Kerwin said he was stunned.
“There was initial shock was what it was. Then trying to gather ourselves to understand it and determining what the right response was, and I think at the end of the day we got it right,” Kerwin said. “But God knows, none of us expected to see what we saw, and we were stunned when we did.”
Kerwin said he is pleased with how the University handled the situation, and that the administration’s vigilance with staying on top of the issue will remain clear in the coming months.
“I think we demonstrated over these many months and especially [through] the emails Gail Hanson issued that we’re on this, and we’re going to stay on this until we’re satisfied that we’re managing it properly,” he said.
“But God knows, none of us expected to see
what we saw, and we were stunned when we did.”
It is this serious and proactive behavior that Kerwin believes will continue in AU’s future, not only in dealing with campus issues, but in providing students with a top notch education and remaining a leader in scholarly work.
“It’ll all be about continuing to do what we do better. Making sure that we continue to conduct research and professional work at the very highest level,” he said. “That every student that comes through this institution feels that when they leave that they’ve had a positive learning experience and that they’ve been pushed as hard as they care to be pushed.”
He also wants AU to remain on the forefront of service, and continues to contribute to the world in positive ways.
“If 50 years from now those things have happened, then we’ve been very successful,” he said.
However, Kerwin said he doesn’t see the University physically growing much more. Once the current construction on the Washington College of Law and East Campus is completed, he said the University will be finished expanding for the foreseeable future. Kerwin also doesn’t feel the size of the student body should expand much more.
“We’re pretty satisfied that we’ve got the size right,” he said. “We’re big enough to be complicated but not so big that people can’t have truly individual experiences. That’s how I personally want to keep it.”
Looking towards the future, Kerwin also commented on what he might like to do after his time as university president comes to an end.
“I think that I’ll go back to the scholarly life and the teaching life that I sort of left to get on this track,” he said. “I would imagine that I’ll [also] probably remain active in higher education circles.”
However, Kerwin said that he plans to stay at his post for a long time to come.
“I’m still really focused on AU. This is a job where there are really difficult issues that you have to deal with on a regular basis,” he said. “But it’s a fabulous job, because of this university and the kind of university it is and the kind of city [I] work in. So I’m very grateful for the experience, and I’m going to do it for a while longer.”
kmagill@theeagleonline.com
