Chancellor Mark Pagano Talks UWT’s Future

A new beginning often comes with a to-do list. The beginning of a new year is the moment when we set goals and get ideas about what changes we will see a year from now. Having become the Head of UWT this past March suc­ceeding the respected late Chancellor Friedman, Chancellor Dr. Mark Pagano, who previously served as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Montana State University Billings, be­lieves a big part of his job is “telling how extraordinary this place [UWT] is,” and has a bucket list of ideas to better serve the “amazing, motivated, hardworking and incredibly thoughtful” students of this campus.

An extraordinary educational insti­tutional will be elevated.

UWT has become a new top choice for more and more high school gradu­ates and community college students who see our great university as a place where skills are earned and dreams are pursued.

Pagano and his team are entering a busy year. He says they will be “serving the needs of students, helping to ensure their success, and providing the kind of support that allows our faculty and staff to maintain and build on our excellence in teaching, student support, and over­all campus experience.”

Under the new chancellor and his administration, we have every reason to believe this academic year will be full of new support for UWT students. Pa­gano says that these will be “the next waves of relevant academic programs, the next building, and the next new extracurricular programs, activities, and services for our students.”

An agenda that affects everyone on campus has to be implemented by more than one person and more than one team. Pagano knows he doesn’t exclu­sively determine how many successes our faculty and students can earn as he says that the administration will con­tinue to “work with our partners in the community to provide opportunities to faculty, staff, and students [by] continu­ing to raise support for programs and scholarships, and collaborates with col­leagues and advocates who help make this a world class urban serving com­munity.”

We’ve got sufficient support from the businesses that just surround us and the organization that exists in Tacoma. We also have sufficient willingness and expertise from those who are inside our campus including administers, instruc­tors, staff members. We students must build a world-class college that is more than a branch of the University of Wash­ington as the UWT has to have its own characteristics and mark.

“We have set a high bar as a univer­sity that continues to add new pro­grams, build partnerships, and deliver excellence in our existing programs,” says Pagano. The chancellor doesn’t want to take a pause because the great­ness UWT has to be promoted day by day.

Building a great university requires collective mind, collective effort, and collective steps because the university belongs to everyone who works and learns here. Each issue we face on our campus should be handled by all of us, regardless of whether we are staff mem­bers, instructors or students. Our voic­es have to be part of every decision made by the administration we entrust to make success a possibility for all of us.

“It’s important for students to have independent voice and to question ev­erything,” says Pagano, who encour­ages students to freely express opinions that could help the administration know what is needed of them. He hopes that “students will take advantage of the op­portunity to get involved in whatever manner works for them.”

Having been the head of the univer­sity for mere months, Pagano intends to start UWT’s 26th year with an agen­da that keeps the university on the right track to become a world class collection of future talents.