By NICK BUDD
Hays Post
Should her next job be in Hays, Kansas, it will be a big culture change for Bronx-native Dr. Cheryl Santos-Hatchett, one of five finalists for the position of Fort Hays State University provost.
But she says she’s already amazed at the university’s success in the field of higher education.
“(FHSU) is poised to really get on top of everything that is innovative,” Santos-Hatchett said. “The job would be to work with people where they’re at and try to see how we could move forward together as a team. The blueprint is there — it’s not like we’ll have to change that.”
Santos-Hatchett expertise is built by a career full of educational opportunities. Before take on a career in higher education, she served as a bilingual teacher in New York, Kansas and the Virgin Islands. The longtime educator also brings Kansas roots to the table, with a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Kansas State University. She picked up her first higher-education opportunity in 1992 as the Coordinator and Associate Professor of Minortiy Assistance Programs at Arizona State University’s graduate school. Her other stops include California State-Bakersfield and Texas Tech University, where she served as a Dean of each school’s College of Education. She currently serves as the founding dean of the Division of Education and Human Services at the University of North Texas at Dallas, a four-year-old institution.
“(My current position) gave me the opportunity to work with all the different facets that bring the university together,” she said. “That experience gave me the confidence to take the next step and hopefully become a provost because I understand how it all fits.”
If given the opportunity to serve as FHSU’s next provost, Santos-Hatchett said she will look toward community members to find out where the university is in terms of properly preparing their students for their next step.
“It’s always about finding out from the clientele how they measure their own success,” Santos-Hatchett said. “That way we’ll know if we’ve been successful. We’ll also have to do a lot of measuring. … Nowadays, we really have to tighten up our measurements and look at what students, parents, the community and businesses are telling us, and we have to work together to define success here at Fort Hays State.”
She also said FHSU’s next step is one of integration and finding out how the university can be more efficient, a plan in line with a recent committee commissioned by President Mirta Martin to find better ways to run the university.
“It’s a question of studying the institution and finding out where we are and taking steps to find out where we are and finding ways to move forward, finding the centers of excellence, and figuring out what needs to be beefed up,” Santos-Hatchett said. “The institution is poised to get on top of everything that is innovative.”
On-campus visits with finalists continue this week with Dr. John Ronnau, dean of the College of Health Sciences & Human Services at the University of Texas-Pan American; and Dr. Gersham Nelson, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Central Missouri.