By Sarah Hansell |
University President Fr. Bill Beauchamp has announced this will be his final year at UP.
Beauchamp said he would stay throughout the RISE campaign, which concludes in June.
“I think the time is right, and as much as I enjoy this job, enjoy working here and really love the University of Portland, I think there does come a time where it’s appropriate,” Beauchamp said. “You can be in a job too long and I don’t want that to happen.”
The search for a new president will begin with UP announcing the open position to the Holy Cross community. The University will establish a search committee of board members, faculty and staff to evaluate the candidates. Beauchamp said that he doesn’t expect the search to take long.
“We have qualified people, people that are very qualified to take over this position,” Beauchamp said. “How many of them will be interested in it remains to be seen.”
Beauchamp was ordained later in life than many other priests. After studying accounting at the University of Detroit, he worked as a financial analyst and an accounting and business law professor. He went to law school at Notre Dame and did not enter seminary until he was 35 years old. He served as a professor and the executive vice president of Notre Dame. In 2002 he became senior vice president at UP, living in Corrado Hall, and in 2003 he became UP’s 19th president.
Portland Magazine Editor Brian Doyle says Beauchamp’s time as a “layman” lends him a valuable perspective.
“He understands that something underneath, that spirituality is bigger than religion,” Doyle said.
During Beauchamp’s 11-year presidency, the University built Fields and Schoenfeldt Halls, rebuilt the Donald P. Shiley School of Engineering and Clark Library, renovated Bauccio Commons as well as many other buildings on campus and purchased and cleaned River Campus.
The University has been honored multiple times for student service, its Fulbright recipients, two athletic teams in the national top 10 and increasing numbers of student applicants.
“If you look at the numbers they’re sort of eye-popping,” Doyle said. “And he never said ‘Yeah, that’s because of me.’”
Many members of the UP community will remember Beauchamp for his work with the RISE campaign, which made many of these improvements possible.
“For me as a student his impact on campus is all around us,” ASUP President and junior Quin Chadwick said. “When you walk into Shiley, that was Fr. Bill. When you hear the Bell Tower ringing, that was part of Fr. Bill. The millions and millions of dollars that were raised for scholarships that allow students to be here, that was done with Fr. Bill. So these are all these contributions to our campus, (that are) truly endless.”
Some faculty also noted that Beauchamp has been instrumental in the University’s progress.
“He very much is somebody who has been involved in the community, has worked with the community and has very much been led by the whole education values and all of the Holy Cross,” Professor Kate Regan said. “And they’re pretty good values, you know, educate the heart and mind.”
Beauchamp also oversaw the addition of sexual orientation to UP’s Nondiscrimination Policy.
“He was committed to examining this thing and trying to make it work right so everyone would feel protected and the sense of community would be strong,” Professor Robert Duff said. “He’s done a really great job in my mind.”
Some students, however, were not impressed by how he handled the situation last year, when students protested the Nondiscrimination Policy’s exclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity, and asked for a response from the administration.
“It was kind of an opportunity for him to reach out to the student body, and I think that him allotting one fireside chat and kind of using The Beacon as a vehicle to speak to the student body was kind of lame,” senior Danielle Knott said.
Some faculty and students who know Beauchamp closely have fond memories of him.
“I think one part of Fr. Beauchamp that I got to see that maybe a lot of students don’t is his sense of humor,” Chadwick said. “It exists. It’s there.”
Chadwick remembers a touching moment between him and Beauchamp before a meeting they had together, when Chadwick’s tie was a bit crooked.
“He comes out and fixes my tie for me, and it really was a sweet moment, to be truly honest,” Chadwick said. “The comment made afterwards was, ‘here is the administration serving students.’”
Duff laughed about his memories of Beauchamp, an avid football fan at Notre Dame, learning to love Pilots soccer.
“It was really interesting to see him kind of progress towards being a soccer fan because I think he really disliked it,” Duff said. “He just wasn’t a big fan initially and through the years I think he’s just changed in that.”
As the University begins the search for a new president, members of the University community look to the future. Some faculty look toward the changes they would like to see at UP, and finding a president who will help make these a reality.
Duff appreciates the increase in diversity at UP, but hopes to see more international students. He also sees a need for more faculty in certain departments, and another academic building with more office space, classrooms and labs.
“The quality of our faculty is really increasing, but the students have been increasing, so we really have some areas that we need attention to, like some of the departments are really understaffed still,” Duff said.
Some students also see the opportunity for progress in the future.
“I like change, so even though I won’t be here I think it’s always a great opportunity when someone new enters a position of power,” Knott said. “I’m counting on students to really use that as an opportunity to challenge things that they don’t like that maybe they weren’t able to get through to Fr. Beauchamp during his time here, to use that as a second chance.”
As the community looks toward UP’s future, Beauchamp speaks of his own, saying he is “not ready to retire,” and that his next position depends on the needs of Holy Cross.
“This has been my life for 11 years and it’s been a real joy, it’s been a real blessing for me,” Beauchamp said.
His time at UP, however, is not over yet.
“I expect to very busy over the next nine months, finishing up the campaign and the other things that are taking place on campus,” he said. “I don’t plan to be a lame duck by any stretch of the imagination.”
