WESTFIELD — To understand where Westfield State University President Linda Thompson wants the school to be headed, it’s important to understand where she’s been.
“I lived in foster care until I was 6, then moved to live with my mother, who raised five children as a single parent on welfare,” Thompson said. “My older sister was a teen mom, never finishing high school, and my other sister was addicted to heroin and died of a gunshot wound at the age of 21. I knew I didn’t want to follow that route.”
She didn’t. Using education as her path to a better life, Thompson was officially inaugurated Friday, 10 months after assuming the responsibilities as Westfield State’s 21st president.
Thompson is the first African American woman to serve as president of a Massachusetts state university. Her early months in office, and her comments at the investiture, have delivered her consistent theme that all students of all backgrounds must have a chance to succeed at higher education, and that work still needs to be done to expand those opportunities, especially to underserved groups and people of color.
The formal investiture was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, whose impact was noted by Carlos Santiago, commissioner of the state Department of Higher Education. Speaking at Friday’s outdoor event on the campus green, Santiago said visits to Bridgewater State University and Westfield State this week were his first two in-person campus visits in more than two years.
Highly visible on campus during the early months of her tenure, Thompson is Westfield State’s fifth president in the last decade, and its third in less than two years. A career as a nurse and in the health care field helped set the tone of her inauguration, which was themed “Bridge to the Future: Restoring our Health.”
Thompson said that goal embraced physical, mental, economic and related forms of health, as well as the health of society.
“It’s been a whirlwind 10 months, (but) a good and generative whirlwind,” she Thompson, who said she senses progress but seeks more.
“We were founded on ideals that are, sadly, still hard for some to comprehend today,” Thompson said. She referenced Westfield State founder and legendary American educator Horace Mann’s 1839 vision of making education available to anyone regardless of race, gender, economic background or other factors.
“Westfield State is an economic engine, a harbinger of opportunity and a lifeline for many. It is, in fact, a bridge,” Thompson said.
Her inauguration was attended by Westfield Mayor Michael McCabe, several state legislators and leaders of other colleges and universities. The keynote address was delivered by Western New England University President Robert E. Johnson, who worked with Thompson at Oakland University in Michigan and has been her close colleague for more than 20 years.
“Both of us are natives of Detroit. We never thought we would wind up in the same place at the same time as university presidents,” Johnson said.
Santiago said Thompson’s public visibility as a university president — and one who escaped poverty through education — is critical in a state where 42% of students in public school kindergarten through grade 12 are of color, but only 8% of teachers fall in that category.
Trustees Chairman Robert Martin said Thompson has already proven herself worthy of carrying on the tradition begun by Mann, who is often called the “Father of American Education.”
“(Mann) said education is the engine for social mobility and the cornerstone of democracy. Those beliefs are as relevant today as they were 180 years ago,” Martin said.
Recognizing Thompson’s efforts as president, Martin said, “This is a position you live 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and you already know that on some days it doesn’t feel like enough.”
Johnson echoed Martin’s support by comparing Thompson’s leadership skills and qualities to a long list of fabled women and African American pioneers, among them Coretta Scott King, Madeleine Albright, Barbara Jordan and Florence Nightingale.
His most direct comparison, however, linked Thompson with 19th-century abolitionist Harriet Tubman, whose involvement with Underground Railroad has overshadowed her later work as a Union Army nurse during the Civil War.
Thompson said she treasures her own nursing background and is dedicated to applying it to Westfield State’s future.
“The foundation of my professional career has been in health care. I am so proud to be a nurse,” she said.
When trustees selected Thompson in the spring of 2021, they hoped her arrival would signal the end of a turbulent period of frequent transition. In 2020, Ramon Torrecilha’s retirement ended a three-year tenure that saw some expansion of the school’s regional footprint, but was plagued by bitter clashes between the president and faculty.
To provide time for a nationwide search, trustees hired Roy Saigo to serve as a one-year interim president. Since replacing Saigo in July, Thompson has received widespread praise for visibility on campus and in the community, and for encouraging dialogue among stakeholders on and off campus.
She described her vision of equity, opportunity and modernized curriculum at the school of approximately 5,400 undergraduate and postgraduate students.
“Education for me was a ticket out of poverty and an opportunity to make a meaningful life,” she said. Thompson also echoed Johnson’s observation that the colleges are preparing students for a future of “jobs that do not yet exist, problems that have not yet been identified and technology that has not yet been created.”
“Education is not fixed or stagnant,” Thompson said. “It must be flexible and lifelong. We must be nimble and adaptive and embrace change.”
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