It’s a challenging time to be the president of a public university.

Aside from the perennial task of finding the resources to create a compelling educational environment, protests over the war in Gaza have been roiling campuses across the country.

Northeastern Illinois University has certainly seen its fair share of turmoil in recent years, including a narrowly averted strike and the departure of the former university president following a vote of no-confidence by faculty.

Now, Katrina Bell-Jordan is officially taking the reins of leadership at NEIU after serving as interim president since July 2023.

The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

WTTW News: You’ve been at the university since 1997 in multiple roles and obviously know the university very well. Tell me a little bit about what you see as the biggest challenges you face and the university faces going forward.                

Katrina Bell-Jordan: Well, like many of our public universities, one of the biggest challenges is resources. We know we have come back somewhat from the years of funding challenges at the state level but we’ve got a lot of work to do in terms of infrastructure support, in terms of facility support and as an HSI (Hispanic-serving institution) and an MSI (minority-serving institution) in particular, our universities are over often more overburdened by operational costs.

We have deferred maintenance and unfunded mandates that are really important mandates, but they’re ones that we have to generate resources to cover. So the main challenge is financial. The other challenges are demographic shifts, the “enrollment cliff” as we call it. Any number of unpredictable enrollment trends are making us really have to think carefully about what programs we offer, how we promote our programs, how long it takes our students to complete their degree and the kind of support we provide for our students.

Enrollment growth and enrollment sustainability is also a major challenge. And I think lastly, I would say student retention. Our students have a number of different responsibilities with their families, with their own jobs and community responsibilities. And, you know, our students don’t graduate in four years. They have a number of things that delay their time to degree. We teach students from high schools and schools that are the least funded in our state and in our region and they need a tremendous amount of support. Now, we’re privileged to serve these students, but we also know that they need a tremendous amount of academic support and social support.

Each of those challenges though is an opportunity.

Without dwelling on the past, clearly issues of enrolment and graduation rates played a part in your predecessor’s departure. As you try and address some of those challenges, where can you go to gather more resources in order to serve your students?

Bell-Jordan: Well it’s a combination. Of course, we go through the process every year of putting our best case forward for a state appropriation….  We no longer get more income from our state appropriation than we get from tuition. We’ve had to really ramp up over the many years that I’ve been here grant funding — local grants, state grants. In fact, in some of our areas of the university, we would not have the level of resources and equipment and laboratory spaces we have if not for federal aid. We also have to grow and continue to cultivate the development side and our house fundraising and getting foundation support to partner with donors that want to see us advance.               

For want of a better term, how would you describe your educational philosophy as a leader of the university? How did you pitch yourself to the board?

Bell-Jordan: Well, I don’t know if I would say that I sold myself this way to the board, but I did indicate to the board that they needed to look for a transformational leader, someone that has the ability to understand where the university has come. Some of the things that we have tried successfully, some of the things that we have not been so successful at. Someone that knows the faculty and the staff and the systems that we have in place so that we can reorganize around those things to move ourselves forward.

One of the things that I said quite a lot to the Board of Trustees is that there’s a leader for every season and that there are times when you need a leader that’s going to come in and bring a completely new perspective, to innovate, create new systems. And then there are times where you need a leader that’s going to be able to help reorganize and reaffirm and recognize some of the things that are working and some of the strategies and the people that just haven’t had an opportunity to be leveraged to bring those things forward.

So I really did offer myself as a transitional leader — even though I’ve been here for 27 years — and as someone that I thought could help bring the campus community together around a shared goal of moving us forward… So I would say that I presented myself as the leader for this particular season. Northeastern may need a different leader 10 years from now, five years from now. But I think that we needed someone that understood this university. And I think that the faculty and the staff and the students know I have the university’s best interest at heart.                  

It’s obviously a potentially fraught time to be a university president. There are issues of free speech on campus. Obviously, we’ve seen an enormous amount of protest over what’s been going on in Gaza. With such a diverse student body how do you go about navigating those kind of issues?

Bell-Jordan: These have been such challenging times for university leadership. These are some of the hardest moments because you’re trying to make sure that your campus is a safe space for all of those who access it. I would say though that I try to remember that universities in particular are contested spaces. Part of what we do at the university is to engage one another. And so when we can no longer do that in healthy, formative productive ways then we have to really rely on the thinking around the policies and the practices that we have established before certain individual situations occur.

At Northeastern, we have had over the years plenty of instances where First Amendment questions came up. It engaged us in conversations around safe spaces for our students and our faculty and community to safely and effectively protest. And so these are situations that may change and shift in terms of what the conflict is. But I think focusing on the policies and practices that reflect the values of your university are the things that I hold on to. At Northeastern, community is a huge value so we want to make sure that our community feels that all of our students belong.