including Eastern Washington University 9 and Western Washington University. 10 Importantly, President Wohlpart’s actions against shared governance and the health of academic affairs are enacted without clear rationale or justification, other than consolidation of his power and authority. III. President Wohlpart’s failure to engage in shared governance and leverage the institutional knowledge and expertise of faculty has resulted in a mismanagement of the University and waste of University resources. At a time of declining enrollment and increasingly restrictive budgets, President Wohlpart has deprioritized and decentered the academic mission by diverting resources away from faculty and student-facing positions within Academic Affairs. These roles which are essential to student recruitment, retention, and academic success have been left unfilled. This pattern reflects a misalignment between stated institutional priorities and the investments necessary to support students and stabilize enrollment. President Wohlpart has regularly relied on expensive external consultants for issues ranging from equity in evaluation to branding and advising rather than recognizing the expertise that exists within the CWU community. These external consultants often return recommendations that overlook and ignore the realities facing CWU and the important work faculty, staff, administrators, and students have already done on these issues. 11 9 According to EWU 101-02, shared governance requires “a great emphasis upon the need to develop consensus about the institutional mission, role, goals and objectives. The need for consensus implies that there is a need to inform, communicate and build the confidence of the other parties in the judgments and decisions made. Implicit in such a system is the acceptance of the principle that sufficient time must be allowed for full participation of all parties involved. Also implicit is the principle that all parties involved will respond in a timely manner . . . . There should be no unilateral action by any single party in the absence of such discussion.” Accessed Jan. 17, 2026: https://inside.ewu.edu/policies/knowledge-base/ewu-101-02-university-governance/ 10 In consultation with their president, the WWU Senate rewrote the faculty handbook’s policy on the consultation process, modeling this process on government-to-government relations between state entities and sovereign Native American Tribes. According to this new handbook policy, passed in April 2025, “There is a mutual commitment to meaningful and active consultation on matters that directly affect stakeholders, particularly in matters related to academics, budget, planning and policy.” Accessed Jan. 17, 2026: https://facultysenate.wwu.edu/sites/facultysenate.wwu.edu/files/2025-04/2025-04April- 22_Shared%20Governance%20and%20Consultation%20Final.pdf 11 In Fall 2024, the President brought in an external consultant from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) to assess advising, despite evaluations in 2022 from CWU accrediting body, the NWCCU, that “advising was in good shape” following a major advising revision effort in 2019, co- led by the Provost office and the Faculty Senate. The consultant met with a small number of advisors and administrators over less than two days, and the resulting report highlighted mostly issues with communication and implementation of the current advising model, as well as issues of too few course offerings. Rather than address the identified issues related to student retention, the administration has proceeded with a major effort to overhaul the advising model. The prosed “new” model is functionally identical to the former model of advising that had been discontinued approximately five years ago. No explanation was given for the recommendation to return to the former model, and the serious challenges inherent in both the current model and the former model were not sufficiently addressed.
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