John M. Wiemann (KNFP-1), Vice Chancellor, University of California, Santa Barbara, California.
This article was originally published in the January 2005 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.
John M. Wiemann is helping lead the charge in California to promote the value of higher education amidst shrinking state funding. Since 1995, John has served as vice chancellor for institutional advancement at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
According to John, his work has grown more challenging in the past few years as, like in most states, the university is affected by ”major declining state support coupled with increasing student demand.”
John’s approach to working through the economic downturn and any other type of crisis is to gather his team and invite input from all the members. ”We try to develop a view of the situation and ask what we need to accomplish, who we need on board, what tools we have or need to find, and what the team members from various disciplines can contribute to the collective effort. Frequently,” he adds, ”what appears to be a crisis really isn’t a crisis when you take an analytic view of it.”
Six years ago, John was one of the founders of a project to supply low-income elementary school students and their families in southern Santa Barbara County with refurbished computers. Working in collaboration with local schools, Computers for Families also provides internet access so that teachers in the project can use internet-based assignments for their students and communicate with students and parents. The students and their families are trained on how to use the computer, which they then take home. Since the project began, more than 4,000 computers have been distributed. ”The digital divide is a significant barrier to the success of people on the wrong side of the divide,” said John. ”This project is closing the gap in Santa Barbara by helping to prepare all students for the high tech world we now live in.”
John credits his Kellogg Fellowship experience with helping to broaden his thinking and give him strategies for confronting problems that, before, had seemed abstract. ”The Fellowship exposed me to people, situations, and ideas that were new and challenging,” he says. ”I developed new ways of thinking about social problems and their solutions, thanks in large part to the group of fellows with whom I was working.”
In December 2004, John became a member of the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance Board of Directors. He notes, ”The Alliance facilitates staying connected with other Fellows. It makes the reconnection for all of us possible.”