Gordon Gee jokes that, having led half the universities in the United States, he is more than qualified to answer the question: what are West Virginia University’s (WVU) biggest differentiators?
Top of the list? “The fact that we really are a very dynamic part of the state of West Virginia,” the WVU President tells The CEO Magazine. “I often use the analogy that most universities are ivory towers. Ours is a helping hand. That’s how we look at ourselves, as we are so heavily engaged in the life of the citizens in our state.”
In 2014, Gee returned to WVU, the university where he had stepped into his first ever President role in 1981. The decades in between had taken him from the University of Colorado to Ohio State University, Brown University, Vanderbilt University (as Chancellor) and back to Ohio State for a second term, during which time he was named by Time magazine as one of the top 10 of university presidents in the United States. It was a journey across state boundaries, but it also gave him the insight that guides him today.
“A university like Ohio State is one of the largest in the country, but there are 13 major universities in Ohio,” Gee explains. “So even though it plays a very major role, it’s one of many. Here, in West Virginia, we are looked at to provide opportunities, options and leadership for almost every aspect of the state.”
“We really do look at the issues of quality of life in West Virginia and we are intimately engaged in the economic development of the state.”
- Gordon Gee
With approximately 25,000 students and a faculty of 3,455, the WVU system is a significant player in a relatively small state: West Virginia’s population is less than two million. Along with being a land grant university (agricultural and technical institutions financed by public funds), the university is classified as ‘R1’ for having very high research activity. The West Virginia University Health System, the state’s largest health system, is also the largest private employer in the state.
As such, WVU’s scope extends well beyond three campuses in Morgantown, Beckley, Keyser, Martinsburg, Bridgeport and Charleston.
“It really does play an outsized influence,” he says. “We really do look at the issues of quality of life in West Virginia and we are intimately engaged in the economic development of the state.”
Setting priorities
In his capacity as President, it’s not unusual for Gee to spend his working day meeting with the Speaker of the West Virginia House of Delegates – or on call with the CEOs of big businesses, such as LG, which has recently announced the creation of 275 high-skilled jobs in the state through the launch of LG NOVA, an innovation center to advance technology and investment in the region. Both are conversations Gee cites as having taken place the day of our interview.
Having similar conversations is Gee’s partner, Major General (retired) James (Jim) A Hoyer. In his capacity as WVU’s Vice President for Economic Innovation, Hoyer provides the link between the university and the state to share ideas, technology and innovation.
“Whenever we need to be engaged in economic partnerships, Jim is right in the middle of it,” Gee says of his colleague.
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A shared passion for West Virginia and a deep belief in the state is what drives the duo in their respective roles. Gee, who hails from Utah, now proudly calls himself a “born-again West Virginian”, while Hoyer, a native of the state, spent 40 years in the military. He retired from his role of nearly a decade, as Adjutant General of the National Guard, in 2021 to take up the position at WVU.
Gee explains that, when he returned to WVU in 2014, he had a trio of priorities. The first was to focus on education itself, beginning with early years.
“I think rural states have really fallen behind in terms of their educational attainments, and I felt the university had a specific calling for that,” Gee explains.
“I think rural states have really fallen behind in terms of their educational attainments, and I felt the university had a specific calling for that.”
- Gordon Gee
Some of the initiatives implemented in the decade since his return include a program for young children in rural West Virginia, which encourages the upkeep of mathematics and reading skills during the summer vacation.
Another priority was health care. “Rural America has some real challenges in terms of health care, and we have this magnificent academic medical center,” Gee notes.
Under Gee’s watch, the West Virginia University Health System has evolved into a world-class network that comprises 25 hospitals and five institutes.
“I tell people that no citizen of the state needs to leave the state to get great health care,” he says.
A powerful partnership
Gee also knows that great health care is a platform for the third priority – prosperity. And it was as he approached this strategic tenant that his partnership with Hoyer was cemented, after the two joined forces as part of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We came together with this notion that we could create jobs and opportunities to keep our young people here and grow the economic vitality of the state,” Gee explains. “That’s still our major project. The two of us spend a considerable amount of our time on the prosperity side of the equation.”
“It’s been a great opportunity for us to both give back to a place that we deeply love, respect and admire.”
- Jim Hoyer
For Hoyer, the opportunity to join WVU came at a time when he was contemplating retirement from the armed forces.
“Gordon and I had been friends for several years,” Hoyer says. “We had a lot of conversations about the next great power competition and national security. He invited me to come and join him so we could focus on how an R1 and a land grant university in a small state could have a major impact on the nation’s security.”
Hoyer was also excited about the opportunity to work alongside Gee.
“He’s one of my heroes for coming back to West Virginia and helping move the state forward when he didn’t have to. He could have gone anywhere else in the country,” Hoyer says. “It’s been a great opportunity for us to both give back to a place that we deeply love, respect and admire, and allow us to move it in the direction of being a national asset.”
The first principles
To achieve the big picture aims, the pair know that the foundations must be strong. Like other universities across the country, WVU has been faced a variety of challenges over the past five years, including a decline in college-age population and college attendance, increasing financial costs and pressure on finances and personnel structures. Further, Gee explains that higher education institutions have lost the trust of the people.
Add into the mix a global health pandemic, which triggered not only financial difficulties, but also increased college dropout rates (so prevalent across the country that it has become known as The Great Dropout), and WVU was projecting a structural budget deficit of US$45 million for the 2024 fiscal year. The actions taken during the past two years closed that projected gap.
“We really subscribe to the fact that we’re an institution that allows ideas to flourish, no matter where they come from.”
- Gordon Gee
In his 2023 Spring State of the University address, Gee announced that the WVU Board of Governors had agreed on a repositioning of the university, aimed on ensuring that the system would remain relevant as it looked to the future.
“A system that meets the needs of the students and of the market – providing degrees and experiences that will lead to meaningful careers and productive lives. A system that invests in the initiatives that will change the trajectory of our state and its people. A university that is uniquely ‘West Virginia University’,” Gee said in the address.
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Gee outlined three principles he believed would return the university to its core roots. These ‘First Principles’, as he called them, are to put students first; embrace its land-grant mission and the people it serves; and differentiate itself through investments in initiatives that uniquely serve its campus community, reflect its values and play to its strengths.
The reposition builds upon an academic and operational transformation that WVU has previously completed, resulting in upgraded facilities such as Reynolds Hall, home to the Chambers College of Business and Economics, and enhanced opportunities for students and faculty in the new College of Creative Arts and Media.
“The strategic positioning is not to be everything to everyone, but rather to pick five or six areas in which we can be better than everyone else and then impact the quality and opportunities in the state,” Gee explains.
An issue of national security
One of West Virginia’s major assets, Gee says, is its appreciation of its role in national security. “West Virginia has had more people in military service than any state in the country per capita, and has lost more people per capita in armed conflicts,” Gee says.
Despite being ranked at the lower end of the 50 states by area and population, it comes in fifth in terms of overall energy production, too. “We’re thinking about national security as a broad-based issue,” Gee explains.
One recent faculty discovery that showcases how WVU is the extraction of rare earth elements from coal slurry.
“If there is a national security issue that I know about, which we can impact, it’s that right there,” Gee says. “Because 95 percent of the Earth’s rare earth elements right now come from China. Alternatives that the nation control’s are the kinds of things we’re thinking about.”
Some of the areas that have been identified include robotics, forensics and health care. Astrophysics is another: along with being home to the Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world to study the solar system, black holes, gravitational waves and neutron stars, two WVU faculty members, Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin, received the Shaw Prize in 2023 for their work in the fields of astronomy, life sciences and medicine and mathematical sciences.
The prestigious award, bestowed by philanthropist Run Run Shaw’s Shaw Prize Foundation, is considered the Nobel Prize of the East.
Opportunity has also been spotted in data science. In early 2024, West Virginia became the fourth state to join the newly launched Amazon Web Services Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance for the promotion of tech skills globally. In collaboration with Amazon Web Services, WVU is establishing a cybersecurity education and training facility, or a ‘cybersecurity range’.
An employment hub
The strategy is positioning WVU as an attractive proposition for students, something that holds particular importance when 55 percent of the student population comes from out of the state.
“Through this transformation, our President, the leadership team and our board have focused on greater experiential learning opportunities for our students,” Hoyer says.
But attracting people to West Virginia to study is one thing. Keeping them once they’ve graduated is another.
“We want them to stay once they are here so we work very hard in creating new jobs,” Gee explains.
“Our President, the leadership team and our board have focused on greater experiential learning opportunities for our students.”
- Jim Hoyer
Along with LG, which was drawn to the state largely thanks to WVU’s efforts in health care, other businesses to invest in West Virginia on the back of the university’s research strengths include Irish-American medical device company Medtronic.
“The WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute is one of the great neuroscience institutes and we really lead the world in terms of Alzheimer’s research,” Gee says.
“We’ve had some good success with smaller West Virginia companies and attracting a couple of larger entities into the state,” Hoyer concurs. “We are now in the position where we are helping those companies fill jobs.”
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One important initiative is the West Virginia University Innovation Corporation, a 9,476-square-meter site in Morgantown launched in 2022, to act as a hub for innovation in science and technology. The first tenant in the facility was Hope Gas, a natural gas provider that has made the Innovation Corporation its corporate headquarters and grown its staff from 100 to 350.
Other West Virginia businesses that are key supporters of the university include Diversified Energy, a major supporter of WVU Athletics. Its CEO, Rusty Hutson, has recently been appointed to the WVU Board of Governors.
Purpose and balance
It’s obvious that there is a lot that sets WVU apart in the higher education space, but the final characteristic Gee names is balance.
“We really subscribe to the fact that we’re an institution that allows ideas to flourish, no matter where they come from. We really work very hard to think about civility, respect and purpose,” he says.
“If making West Virginia a better place is a hobby, then that’s probably ours.”
- Jim Hoyer
To that end, it has become the only institution in the country with a Purpose Center, a space for students to participate in workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions. For Gee, the very existence of the center sums up the whole essence of what WVU stands for.
“We are trying to be an institution that is not simply about higher education, but also about higher purpose,” he says.
As for their purpose, both Gee and Hoyer acknowledge that, from the outside, they are seen as workaholics. “But if making West Virginia a better place is a hobby, then that’s probably ours,” Hoyer says with a smile.
Operational mode
Gee and Hoyer met when Hoyer was the Adjutant General of the National Guard, although he was more like the ‘CEO for Emergency Response’, Gee says.
“We had some terrible issues with flooding and with the pandemic,” Gee says. “And West Virginia Governor Jim Justice called upon General Hoyer to really take responsibility to solve those problems. It was really being in charge of a state that needed to have the discipline of a military leader. He did that beautifully.”
For Hoyer, it was an experience that brought into focus the extent to which WVU is taking its R1 and land grant and operationalizing it.
“When the pandemic hit, Governor Justice asked me, in my role with the National Guard, and Clay Marsh, WVU’s Chancellor and Executive Dean of Health Sciences, to lead the state’s response,” Hoyer says.
“We took disciplines across the institution and operationalized it in response to the pandemic. For example, people from our health sciences side did wastewater testing, so we knew what challenges we had in communities. We were the first state in the country to do our own genomic sequencing. We had people in heart and vascular doing high-end support to patients who did get hospitalized. We had folks in engineering helping build test kits.
“It was a great example of taking the assets of the institution and putting it in an operational mode to serve the people of the state.”
Gee, for his part, is approaching retirement, but his intention to remain involved is resolute. “It’s a calling, a ministry, and that’s the reason I came back,” he says.
“Both of us, absolutely, are workaholics. But we are also really energized by what we see happening in the state because we want it to be better. This is where I live, this is where I’m going to die and this is where I want to make my mark.”
