President Sue Edwards | Photo by Chris Snyder
Wright State University President Sue Edwards shares her struggles as the university’s second female president and her goals for the university going forward as it grapples with student recruitment and retention.
A Woman in a male dominated field
Edward is only the second female president in WSU’s history, the first being her predecessor Cheryl B. Schrader who served from 2017 through 2019. According to the Hechinger Report, 70% of current university presidents are male.
Edwards describes sometimes having difficulty in this male-dominated field and how it prompts how people perceive her as a president.
“When a woman makes a difficult decision they are called a bad word, but when a man does it, they’re strong,” Edwards said.
She chooses to use the prejudices that she experiences as fuel rather than let them bring her down. Her first priority is always the student body, focusing on her goals of relationship, retention and recruitment.
Her personal experience
Edwards earned her Ph.D. in comparative physiology from Deakin University in Australia and then shortly after joined Wright State University as executive vice president for academic affairs and provost in 2018 and officially took office as president in 2020.
She says her experience as a professor still heavily shapes who she is today, describing being faculty as “the best job in the world.”
“I develop those relationships with the students in my classrooms. So I think that being a professor allowed me to do that on a small scale. Being a president allows me to do it on a bigger scale,” Edwards said.
Edwards took a non-traditional pathway to become university president. The educator came to the U.S. in 2007 to join the Department of Biology at Appalachian State and taught more than 10 degree programs in addition to her biological research on hagfish. Edwards actually aimed to be provost of WSU but became president at the recommendation of the board of trustees.
“I really wanted to go to a university where I was going to be able to make a difference in students’ lives and I saw Wright State was that opportunity. I think the university has gone through a lot of negativity, and I just saw an opportunity to come in and make a difference because it's not about the work, It's about the students,” Edwards said.
Edwards enjoys interacting with students as they navigate campus, and especially enjoys seeing students during their graduations. But being president of a university of more than 8,000 students also has its difficulties.
“You never know what to expect and you never know what's coming in the door at any given point in time. It's very complex because you have to be a politician, you have to be an influencer and in some ways, you have to be a cheerleader. You have to be a fundraiser. You have to be an administrator. You have to be a budget person. You have to understand the academics and you have to be a people person,” Edwards said.
Goals
In terms of recruitment, application numbers from 2020 to 2022 have jumped 22.6% with a total of 1,108 applicants. Schools like Sinclair, Clark State and Edison State each have a total of over 80 transfer applicants due to increased relationship efforts.
Edwards has also made more efforts with outreach to local high schools in addition to community colleges. There has been significant effort into putting more work into the university’s reputation to potential students. As of now, Edwards plans to focus on repairing relationships internally with student organizations and incoming students.
“I start with relationships because it kind of underpins everything,” Edwards said.
The national average for students going from freshman year to sophomore year is 69%. The current retention rate for WSU is 64% from freshman to sophomore, and Edwards aims to bring this number up to 75%. Only 39.5% of students at WSU complete a bachelors’ degree within six years. Despite the low numbers, Edwards remains positive.
“I've often talked to people and it's quite often you'll see somebody that may not necessarily be having a great day and you interacting with an individual may make the difference between staying or leaving,” Edwards said.
WSU’s care team and success coaches are a few of the ways Edwards plans to increase retention rates. The main goal is to get students connected with the services they need to be successful. Edwards believes that the future of the university revolves around its students and has no plans to leave the presidency any time soon.
“My philosophy is I do the job until there is nothing else to do in terms of achievement or sometimes things come to a natural end. I would do this job until people are done with me doing it,” Edwards said.
Edwards says there is nothing she would change about how she got here, not even the hard parts.
