Spencer Stewart is chancellor of Western Governors University Nevada, a private, online school that launched here in June with a proclamation by Gov. Brian Sandoval. Over the past six months, Stewart says, the school has increased its enrollment by about 60 percent, up to nearly 1,500 students. Much of the growth has occurred in WGU’s College of Business, followed by the College of Health Professions, Teachers College and College of Information Technology.
Do you have any recent news to share?
In March, we introduced a masters degree in data analytics. As businesses collect an increasing amount of data, the need to accurately interpret, manipulate and make use of the data becomes more crucial for strategy development and ongoing success. I’m excited to see how this new program will benefit our students and employers.
What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in your 14 years in education?
The higher education industry is undergoing dramatic transformation, and the pace of transformation will only continue to accelerate. It reminds me of the oft-quoted line: “Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and they happen faster than you thought they could.” Change is happening within the higher education landscape faster than I thought it ever could.
This transformation is allowing us — or forcing us, depending on your perspective — to revisit the fundamental questions that most societies wrestle with when it comes to education. Whom do we educate? How do we educate? How do we pay to educate? I don’t believe we’ve ever been in a period where advances in technology and globalization have allowed, or forced, society to think differently about these questions.
As we begin to address these fundamental questions in a new light with new tools, it will require a re-examination of the industry’s fundamental models in governance, funding, cost, business, delivery and assessment. In some cases, these models have been with us, largely unchanged, since before the Industrial Revolution.
What are your goals at WGU Nevada?
I constantly find myself reflecting on my time and the invaluable lessons I learned at Nevada State College. It was a remarkable opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest and most talented people in Nevada and to build something of lasting value and importance for this community — its students, parents and employers — for years to come.
I plan to do much of the same at WGU Nevada. My hope is that I’ve learned a bit from my previous experiences — both successes and failures — to help move WGU Nevada forward at the pace and with the quality that the “New Nevada” requires.
What are you reading?
“The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got that Way,” by Amanda Ripley. It offers a fascinating account of three American high school students, each embedded abroad as a foreign exchange student within one of the world’s K-12 education superpowers: South Korea, Finland and Poland. As a cross-cultural study, it sheds a bright light on the process by which countries transform — not merely reform — their educational systems.
What do you do after work?
My wife, Tessa, and I have three young children: twin girls in first grade and a 3-year-old boy. As a result, our nights usually are spent doing homework and playing with our children. More often than not, whatever we’re playing devolves into an all-out wrestling match that involves every pillow in the house.
Describe your management style.
I remember as an undergraduate reading an article — it now has become a classic within the business management cannon — by Michael Maccoby, which claimed that the “productive narcissist” (his term) is the best management and personality style for today’s business environment. I remember feeling at such odds with the article’s premise that it caused me then and there to begin to think through what my own management style would eventually become. I would describe my management approach as one of servant-leadership, which is focused on the growth and development of others within the organization.
What is your dream job, outside of your current field?
A few years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to travel through the Guatemalan jungle, exploring Mayan ruins. I fell in love with the culture and history, and since that experience, I’ve been harboring a desire to become an amateur archeologist specializing in Mesoamerican studies.