By Peace Times Staff
All anyone cares about is pineapples, but what about growth?
Dr. Jennifer Walsh, the new president of William Peace University, talked about herself and her vision for Peace at an SGPA event Sept. 2 in Leggett Theatre. While her professed love for pineapples on pizza may have stood out to many students, much of her talk focused on the university’s growth, including adding graduate programs and addressing “growing pains” such as parking and building repairs.
“Our goal is to try to maximize our beautiful campus and the resources that we have in this community, and make sure that the rest of the future students understand how special this place is,” said Walsh.
Adding graduate programs
Walsh said she hopes to increase the number of on-campus and online students, but another area of growth will be the addition of graduate-level degrees. Her plans for the graduate program include an online-hybrid format, focusing on degrees that are distinctive and meet a curated set of needs for the Raleigh area.
“We’re not going to offer every graduate program out there,” Walsh said.
She also said that the university will keep an eye on the overall Peace experience as the student population grows.
“We want to be sensitive to preserving the things that make us special,” said Walsh. “So we’ll be watching for class sizes and keeping an eye on facilities and making sure that as we grow, we’re adding resources and capacity to make sure that the experience is maintained along the way.”
Avery Cain, a first-year pre-law major at Peace, echoed that sentiment in an interview.
“I want to be able to see the school grow but not take away from what we already have,” said Cain. “I think that growth is important but also to keep the environment and culture the same.”
Parking and facilities
Walsh acknowledged that parking and facilities are challenges resulting from a growing campus. She noted that having faculty volunteer to park in other lots has eased the parking issues at the start of the semester, and shared plans to rent more parking spaces in nearby lots and partner with the church across the street.
“We know that the time you spend circling is time that could be spent doing other things, like studying or you know, hanging out with your friends or doing something more productive,” she said. “So our goal is to try to get that down to a minimum.”
Regarding facilities, she compared the historic buildings to an elderly relative that requires care and patience, and promised to fix issues with air conditioning and leaky ceilings in a timely manner without compromising the character of the older buildings.
Path to Peace
Throughout the address, Walsh also shared information about her life and the lives of those close to her. She grew up in Southern California and has been in school, either as a student or faculty member, for 51 years now. After growing disillusioned with the organizational structure of public colleges, Walsh began working at non-profit institutions, a path that led her to Hawaii and eventually to Raleigh.
Walsh has been married for 36 years; her husband is retired now, but formerly worked as a senior librarian at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts. They have an adult daughter, currently living in New York City, who has a wife and child of her own.
Organizers hoped the event would help students know the new leader personally and understand her goals for the university.
“I wanted it to be a like welcome event kind of for her, as well as like an opportunity for students to hear more about like where she came from and what she is gonna bring to Peace, like big picture wise, and what she’s doing currently,” said Rebecca Boyle, Peace University’s current SGPA president.
Students who went to the event seemed satisfied with Walsh’s speech.
“It was a great event,” said Hannah Tedder. “The president was very open and honest about her intentions with this university, and I’m glad we get to see her blossom in this new role.”
-Contributors: Jazmin Vassallo, Graham Grady, Kaylin Gooch, Kylie McWhorter
Photo by Cecil Dupree