Baldwin Wallace University’s 19-member presidential search committee announced Lee Fisher, the current Dean of the law school at Cleveland State University, as the tenth president of BW on Monday.
Lee Fisher, who is positioned to assume the role of president on July 1, is already making plans for his first actions when he takes office.
“The first thing I want to do when I arrive on campus is to focus on knowing what I don’t know. Meaning that I come into every job with questions, not answers. I want to learn what’s going well. I want to learn about what’s not going well,” Fisher said.
Other aspects of his plan include building a team, crafting a vision, putting together a strategic plan and meeting challenges head-on while being decisive and sensitive.
Steven Balcomb Jr., a junior environmental science major and student senator said: “It would be helpful to get a more vocalized approach on what is being done [at BW].”
Balcomb also said that he would like to see the president communicate more with the student senate and the student body on the decisions that he will make as president.
Since October 2023, BW has been struggling with a financial deficit. Due to this, the need for administrative decisions has grown significantly.
To address these struggles, Fisher said that one of the first things that he will do is “try to make sure we’re [BW administration] as transparent as possible.”
Fisher wants to take time “communicating the nature of that problem to everyone on campus including, even, those not on campus.”
His goal is to be “realistically optimistic,” in which he explained as maintaining optimism while acknowledging the issue and difficulties surrounding a topic, in this case finances.
“This will not be the first job where I was presented with a big challenge, and this is a big challenge, but I’ve always had to deal with big challenges, and so far I’ve been successful in addressing every one. Whether it was the private, public, nonprofit or academic sector,” said Fisher.
In addition to maintaining communication with students and faculty, Fisher wants to be open to suggestions from others. Having experience as a Dean at CSU, he has experience partnering with students, and he believes that it begins with respecting students as adults, working with them and asking them to be part of the solution.
“I’ve worked with students every single day, so I have a lot of experience working with students and partnering with students. It [finding a solution] starts with respecting students and treating them as adults,” Fisher said.
