Cantwell looking to the future

Elizabeth Cantwell took her time listening and learning this year. After her first year as Utah State University’s president, she’s ready to take what she heard from students, faculty and staff and make the university a better place. 

The Utah Statesman interviewed Cantwell after the first week of the fall 2023 semester. She shared her plans to host listening sessions revolving around three key questions: What do you think we should be doing that we need more of, or what are we good at that we need to be even better at? What do we need to worry about? And what does Cantwell need to know about that you don’t think anyone else will tell her?

Since then, Cantwell has hosted over 25 listening sessions across all statewide campuses and involved student groups ranging from 25 to 100 individuals. The last session took place in February in Vernal.

Participants were also provided an online platform to give feedback. Data is currently being analyzed using machine learning techniques to identify common themes and consensus points.

“The thing that we unanimously heard is that everybody wants more interdisciplinary discussion about solving these big world problems,” Cantwell said. “And we have lots of really interesting ideas about how we do that. But this focus on big, complicated, hairy problems was really fairly ubiquitous.” 

According to Cantwell, students are concerned about climate change and its potential dangers, water scarcity in Utah and energy consumption. Additionally, topics such as free speech and political conflicts, including the Israel-Hamas war, are prominent among student discussions.

“When you think about what makes the news, some of it is just a lot of noise, but a lot of it is part of these big, complicated challenges that we have,” she said. “What does globalization look like now? What does the world of work look like now? What’s AI going to do? What’s the future of food?” 

Cantwell also spoke about issues impacting the campus community and recent laws passed by the Utah legislature regarding diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 

“We will always follow the law, so that’s what’s going to happen. If you read the legislation, it’s very supportive of what I would call excellence in supporting students,” she said. “That can take and should take many forms. Part of our land grant mission is having access for all.” 

Cantwell is optimistic that the university’s current initiatives won’t be negatively affected by the legislation, which includes “a lot of leeway.” She said the language in the law emphasizes the importance of going above and beyond, working harder and prioritizing student support services, and she is thankful USU cultural centers will remain unaffected. 

“There will be more to come on the interpretation of the legislation, but I don’t see significant changes to our cultural centers,” she said. “We don’t have cultural centers, say our Latinx center, that are places where only people of Latino or Latina background can go. They’re support systems, and the same was true for the new Native American Cultural Center. So we’ve never had these constructs here that were really exclusive just for certain types of people. They were support systems. And if you went into the Latinx center, there were all kinds of people in there supporting our Latinx students.”

Over the course of the year, Cantwell has hosted and published the podcast, “Future Casting.”

There are four published episodes featuring a range of topics, from sexual violence to conflict resolution. Episodes can be found on the presidential communication website.

“Higher education is kind of a point institution in all of the social changes that are happening super fast. That’s a global thing. It’s not just the United States. It’s not just Utah, but so there’s a lot coming at us and I don’t find it really awful, but you have to be on your toes kind of all the time,” she said. “And I do think this job, while it is the right mission for me, certainly now is one of the most complicated ones in the U.S. You look at managing big programs that are doing all kinds of things. This one’s got lots of moving parts.”

Cantwell said the world is changing quickly, and as president of USU, she is heavily invested in leading the university to define their own future. 

“You cannot prevent change from happening. You cannot. So you’ve got to embrace it,” she said. “Everybody knows this about lots of things in their life, but this is true for this job and what we are doing as an institution — the more you resist, the worse it gets. Yes, you’ll make mistakes, things will get weird sometimes. And I do think there’s a hunger for you know, driving ourselves and driving this institution to a better and different future. We know it’s going to be different.”