A Transition in the WCIU Board of Directors
Dr. Monica Mitchell
Appointed as WCIU Board Chair!
A NOTE FROM THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT ON JULY 1, 2021
“At last night’s meeting of the board, and as part of the annual renewal/election of officers, the Board unanimously approved Monica Mitchell’s appointment as our next Chair! Mike Soderling has served for over two years as chair, and for several years prior to that as a consultant who help us adopt and implement Policy Governance as a model. Mike, we are very grateful for the ways you tirelessly served WCIU. Monica is well known to our academic community through her work with our DEI team, among other things, and has had a long relationship with WCIU and Frontier Ventures via Perspectives-USA. Monica, thank you for all you have already contributed to us in your time here! We look forward to the season ahead!”
— DR. KEVIN HIGGINS
Reflections from my time as board chair by Dr. mike soderling
Little did any of us realize the immensity of the work that would need to be done over the next 2 + years when I accepted the role of CGO (Chair) of the WCIU Board of Directors in January of 2019. And that's to say nothing about the impact the COVID pandemic would have in our work as a team. The entire board has been asked to go above and beyond the norms that most boards are accustomed to. At times our meetings were occurring weekly but never less than monthly. Normal expectations for board members is that meetings occur quarterly. So we have been asking a lot of our members and they have graciously dedicated the time and energy to complete and enormous amount of work.
Dr. Mike Soderling
WCIU thanks you for your service as Board Chair!
The most important work of a board, be it a Policy Governance board, as is WCIU, or any board for that matter is to be sure the ends for which the university exists are clear and that the CEO/President is seeing that these ends are being met. It is not that boards exist to meddle and try to micro-manage what admin is doing (though most boards still fall into this trap). We proscribe a space within which the CEO/President can safely and creatively work to achieve the established ends. At our final meeting of the year we were able to approve a set of Ends that I believe, the entire board believes and the CEO/President believes, are the Ends for which the Lord has called WCIU to accomplish. This set of Ends establishes the uniqueness of WCIU among all similar institutions and sets us on a course towards greater and greater impact for God's kingdom. No other university I know of has a particular view toward impact in the regions and peoples of world where the name of Jesus the Messiah is not yet known. Let's all pray together that future WCIU Boards, Presidents, staff and students all remain faithful to these Ends. If this happens we can be assured that the Church will advance on many fronts and more and more peoples will be freed from bondage and the roots of human suffering will be more fully addressed! May it be so, Amen.