Kerry Fulcher is Point Loma Nazarene University’s 15th president, following former university president Bob Brower’s 27 year service. The university’s Board of Trustees sent a campus-wide email on July 1, announcing that Fulcher was hired for the role. His first official day as university president was Aug. 16. Since then, Fulcher has had a number of new responsibilities to get used to that go beyond his experience as former provost and chief academic officer at PLNU.
The Point: Your first official day was Aug. 16, which means, as of now, you’ve been University President for 109 days. How are you feeling? How’s it going?
Kerry Fulcher:
It’s been a high learning curve. All the other positions I’ve ever held, you’ve kind of been able to get into a rhythm.
I’ve not found a rhythm yet. It’s all these other areas where the president has oversight of, but I have not yet actually, I don’t know the details of their work. So the president needs to have kind of a 40-thousand-foot level view of the university in its entirety, and for me on the academic side, it’s very easy, because I’ve worked in the weediest of weeds in there, all the way up.
So I know that whole sector from top to bottom. But you know, now when you get to advancement, and student life and development, and alumni, and business office, and financial aid, university services, all these other areas – I’ve interacted with them only tangentially in my previous roles. And so I need to be able to understand what their work is, so that I can then move up to that 30-thousand-foot level, and provide good overall oversight.
It’s a learning curve, which is good. I love learning. … So I’m getting a chance to practice that. And that’s just the internal parts, then there’s the external parts.
The learning curve
Fulcher said that former PLNU President Bob Brower had board seats on the Economic Development Corporation and the Chamber of Commerce. At first, Fulcher didn’t know if those positions would transfer, but both entities offered him board seats when he became president. Getting to know these organizations and attending their events to make connections within different business sectors in San Diego has been a large part of his new responsibilities. In addition to external connections, Fulcher has oversight within athletics. He said another part of the learning curve was getting up to speed on NCAA regulations and conference related issues.
Other new aspects of the job include maintaining government relations and denominational connections.
KF: I think it’s a little bit like drinking through a fire hose on all that information, but just trying to come up to speed on all that.
And then there’s kind of looking at my leadership team and what that looks like, and what are some key vacancies that we have. We don’t have all those positions filled, so you’ve got to search for those positions. And then maybe what gaps we might have within the cabinet structure. And so do we want to add people into those gaps? Because coming through COVID-19 and beyond, we were able to trim things down. And the question is, do we leave them trimmed down, or are these gaps really necessary that we need to fill? So those are all things that are undecided yet, but those are things I’ve been working with.
TP: What do you think has been the hardest part of the learning curve?
KF: The breadth. It’s just so many things. So each week is different. And because your schedule gets really stretched, and some of the routine things that you want to keep up with, like email and things like that, those are hard to keep at a responsible level of answering. … So your attention is pulled in so many different directions. And so you kind of have to learn how to just shift gears all the time. So that’s probably been the hardest part is just there’s no routine. Every week has been new.
TP: What are some of the shorter term goals that you’ve been focused on for this first semester?
KF: First semester is really trying to go around listening as much as I can to, again, [there are] all these areas that I now have high level oversight of, but haven’t been engaged in at the detail level. So I’ve just had tons of meetings with different groups within that. Most of those have been in university employment pockets, but then also some at the level of student groups as well.
I’ve met with ASB, engaged with them several times, had a chance to visit a few classes, that kind of thing. And then engaging during the Welcome Week, it’s just engaging new students coming in. Trying to be around and available with and for students. Trying to attend as many of the athletic events as possible, other events that are on campus to support those. Chapel, all those sorts of things.
TP: What about some of your longer term goals?
KF: I want to get the cabinet team finalized and together. We have the OnePLNU strategic plan. I want to be able to implement that. We’re kind of working on a relaunching of the communication of that [strategic plan].
Because of the way it came about, stretched in across COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 and lots of transitions of people in and out, it didn’t get the level of participation you normally would want to be able to have in a strategic plan. And so it’s important that people understand it and people see how their work fits into it. That’s especially true as you have an accrediting visit that comes up in a couple of years.
And that’s one of the things they’ll want to know is: ‘What’s the strategic plan?’ ‘How are you engaged with it?’ ‘How does your work connect to it?’ So lots of times the strategic plan is what drives the current levels of priorities and spending and all of those various things. So getting that, the re-communication of that, going forward. We’ve got a new website that’s put together for that.
And then beginning to look at the various initiatives that are within that and being able to push them forward and track who’s responsible, what’s the next deadline for that, what’s the next benchmark that we’re looking at for that along the way. So that’s a critical piece. Wrapped up in that really is a lot of making sure that we’re trying to operate as efficiently as possible so that we’re being good stewards of resources that we have. Identifying what the gaps in our current ability to do things that are essential. And you’ve got to spend money in those particular areas in order to make sure that you’re covering those gaps.
We’re really trying to integrate advancement within the academic and co-curricular programming much more seamlessly than we’ve had in the past. We’ve been without a VP for advancement for a year and a half. So trying to get that position filled is very key as we move into our 125th year celebration that’s coming up.
TP: Is developing the strategic plan the main way you’re gearing up for accreditation right now?
KF: No, but it is an important part. So the accreditation is always coming to look at what’s the general health and climate of the university.
They’re looking at all of the areas around: Are you doing what you say you’re doing around curriculum and assessment of programs to ensure program qualities? Are you doing what you say you’re doing around alignment to your mission and how are you evaluating that? Are you being fiscally responsible? And then you have your last visit and out of your last visit they had things you can work on and so they’re going to come back and say this is what we said last time. What are you doing now? How have you then improved in that particular context there? So the strategic plan, you should be able to link that to budgeting, should be able to link that to priorities that the university is working on, should be able to link that to the work that people are doing. And so they’re looking [to see]: Is this school thinking about its future? That’s really important especially in the context of higher ed these days, where things are changing so rapidly.
We’ve been fortunate to have several of our people on campus who have served as evaluators for other schools. I’ve done many myself, Dr. Brower did many. We’ve got several other people that have done those and that always helps us to kind of know: Here are the things that we were looking for as a team. And you then turn that lens on yourself and say: We know these are the kinds of questions that are coming.
TP: You’ve mentioned a couple empty positions that you’re trying to fill. Are you looking to hire from within or externally? What’s that process looking like for the school?
Filling empty or interim university positions
Fulcher said that there are times when an open position is a clear fit for someone internally that can step into the role, but there are also situations where you can identify people you think could be good, but still want to open the positions to external candidates. A step further is recognizing when you don’t have good networks to be able to identify the best candidates, so hiring a specialized search firm is the next step, he said.
KF: [The search firm] will beat the bushes, they will identify candidate pools, they’ll do the screening of those candidates based upon a profile that they’ve generated for your university, and then and then they will present you kind of a slate of you know seven [to] eight people and you then narrow that down to your finalists.
That’s the case that we’re doing for our advancement VP and we’ve already hired a search firm and they’re in that process of moving us forward. We hope to make an offer for someone in late February [or] early March.
And then the my old position, the provost position, we currently have an interim in that role that one’s opened up we’ve got a lot of potentially internal candidates that could be interested, we have external candidates interested, so we’re going through that process [and] hope to have an offer there also somewhere late February early March. So those are two of the open positions that, one of them is literally open one of them is filled with an interim. We’re looking at: We did a gap analysis and there are certain cabinet level positions that are very typical of schools like ours that we don’t have, and so, are those being covered efficiently by what we currently have or do we need to actually open up a position for those?
Getting that team together is a really important piece because I’ve already told you that my schedule pulls me in so many different directions, [so] the real work at the university happens with the team that’s put together.
TP: You just had the board of trustees meeting. How was that?
KF: I’ve been to a lot of them so [it was the] first one that I had to help organize with the board chair. I thought it went well. The previous two board meetings were a little atypical. Because of Dr. Brower’s announcement for retirement, they had to focus a lot of their attention on transition and [the] search firm looking for the replacement, and so a lot of the kind of the routine work that normally happens at a board meeting, you know, we’re a couple years behind on. So there were some things that had been kind of put on the back burner that we’re beginning both in this fall and then in the spring beginning to come back to.
This particular meeting is the one where you set the budget parameters for the following year, and then the spring meeting is the one where you approve the projected budget for the following year. So, a lot of work happens between those two meetings where these are the budget parameters – so you know looking at tuition increases, looking at fee increases, looking at whether you increase or not, those sorts of things.
Routine check-in with areas of the university
Fulcher said that another part of setting the budget is collecting personnel requests from various areas and putting those in front of the cabinet to approve or deny in the spring. The Board of Trustees meeting also includes getting a report from various areas of the university updating them on how they are operating.
KF: There are other routine things that we always [receive a] report on: ‘Here are the things that are happening in each of the areas of the university.’ [We] get a report from ASB, from a student standpoint, [we] get a report from Student Life and Formation [describing] ‘here are the things that we’ve been doing.’ In that, you get the academic things around ‘these people are up for promotion,’ ‘these are the people we hired.’ They affirm the hires and they approve the promotions. People that get tenure, they approve that. They approve sabbaticals, so you have committee meetings that bring action items to the board, and then the board acts on those.
TP: Anything you want students and faculty to know?
KF: I continue to be excited about our future as I’ve been able to engage with external [higher education communities]. I’ve been pretty plugged into the external higher ed community around private higher education over time, and so I have a pretty good pulse on that. But as I move into the president’s role as I’m looking at the health of our institution, we are in a very enviable position comparatively speaking.
I was just talking with the head of the CCCU, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, which we’re a part of, and their survey for this year shows that 40% of those schools … are in significant financial challenge. Six this year closed, and you could probably count the number of institutions that closed in the last 15 years on one hand. So there’s a lot of challenge in higher ed right now, financially especially … and it’s hitting our sector, it’s hitting every sector.
When you broaden that to the Council of Independent Colleges and Universities, which is all the privates, and so there’s four or five hundred of those that are part of that organization that I’ve been involved in, it’s a similar sort of a story. We’re, I think, in the top 10% in both of those categories and so that’s, again, a very enviable position to be in. So I continue to be grateful for that.
Some of the other things that I’ve known because I’ve been part of the community but then I’ve also had external people tell me the incredible quality of our students as they go out into internships and then into employment positions. Our students are highly sought after, again, that’s a good indicator [that the] quality of your programs is doing well – when you continue to get that feedback all the time. When people engage with our staff and faculty here, they’re just amazed at how friendly they are and how dedicated they are to the work that they do, so again, to a president’s ears that’s music. It confirms what I observe but having external validation is always a bonus. Because you can be biased; you can look at your own team and say ‘Hey we’re really good,’ but when outside people are telling you that, that’s good.
Coming into this in an election year, we did some very intentional programming. Our community has been pretty good over time, but we’re not immune from all the other sorts of crazy that happens around us and so we did some intentional programming. I was very pleased with the way in which our community has tried to engage with one another in that time of very potential divisiveness that’s there. We’re past that, we have no idea what the future looks like, and so that is obviously something that we’re anticipating moving forward, but again I think we were able to model healthy engagement and interaction and so I’m proud of that.
TP: To clarify the intentional programming you’re talking about, are you referring to Olive Branch Solutions and the chapel programming?
KF: Olive Branch Solutions was part of it, we also brought in some people from the AND Campaign, so Justin Giboney was one of those and then Chris Butler, he came in and talked with faculty and staff. In our faculty convocation at the very beginning of the year, we had a faculty panel around expertise on kind of political and communication engagement with that, that tried to help faculty on their own communication with colleagues as well as how can they then build classroom context where this is there.
And so a combination of those things, along with training that we’ve had at the Center for Teaching and Learning that have helped faculty develop pedagogies that help engage in respectful ways. Most of those were aimed at our faculty and staff, helping them get ready to be able to help students. Then we had, in addition to the Olive Branch Solutions for the student leaders that then also had from chapel in those in the students there were some other people that were brought in at the student leadership level to help them engage and be ready for: ‘What if this [and] that?’ ‘How do you step in and help in this kind of a context?’ So I think we did a lot to try to get the community at least ready, not knowing what might happen, and I would always rather over prepare than under prepare. I heard not every one of those particular things was as effective as others, but I think in total, we were able to do a pretty good job with that from what I’ve heard.
Angelica Moser 
Tessa Balc