Jan. 10—PLATTSBURGH — Dr. Brent Carbajal, former Provost and Vice President of academic affairs at Western Washington University, will join SUNY Plattsburgh as interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.
Carbajal will begin Monday, August 14.
Carbajal’s work at Western Washington, in Bellingham, Wash., 20 miles south of the Canadian border, spanned more than 25 years and included roles as professor of Spanish, department chair and dean.
According to Dr. Alexander Enyedi, SUNY Plattsburgh president, priorities for Dr. Carbajal’s year-long appointment include a focus on the budget and financial stability of the division, academic program development, student retention, shared governance, and an examination of the structure and organization of academic affairs.
“When I retired in August of 2022, I knew that I wanted to stay active in academia. I had also seen some external interim leaders at WWU help move us forward in important ways and sometimes complex situations,” Carbajal said.
“I thought to myself at the time that if my experience and knowledge of university administration could help another institution move forward, that would be work in which I would be interested during my retirement.”
According to Carbajal, one reason Carbajal decided on SUNY Plattsburgh were how its mission and values “aligned with WWU’s and with my own sense of how we should be serving students and communities,”.
“I feel very strongly about the importance of equity of access to higher education and also about equity of outcomes and success,” Carbajal said.
“Supporting people as they strive to solve problems and work toward solutions has always been one of my favorite aspects of the provost position. Along these lines, I look forward to collaboration with many new colleagues and to learning about challenges and opportunities associated with progress on the strategic plan.”
As for the priorities outlined by the president, Carbajal said it’s difficult to look at them as separate entities.
“Because all of (the president’s) priorities are so connected, I don’t necessarily see a ‘first’ priority,” Carbajal said.
“For example, the financial stability of academic affairs is critical to academic program development, which is tied to student retention — and recruitment, by the way.
“I will also say that I think that shared governance on campus can and should play an important role in all of this work. So rather than a rank order list, I see the priorities more as a coherent and interconnected grouping of goals for the year,” he added.
Carbajal is entering the academic year with enrollment hitting its goal in new-student enrollment.
According to President Alexander Enyedi, new-student enrollment for the fall 2023 semester is on pace to meet or exceed the university’s goal of 1,700.
“We are still processing state-side funding from SUNY for the new fiscal year, but we will close the last fiscal year with revenues and expenses about even, giving us roughly the same $14 million carry forward balance as a year ago,” Enyedi said in a campus-wide message.
E-mail: jlotemplio@pressrepublican.com
Twitter: @jlotemplio
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