Meet the WWC President and CFO
Harley Woods | September 8, 2022
Willow Solomon
President Bill Christy speaks to Editor-in-chief Harley Woods
May 15, 2022 is the date that former Warren Wilson College (WWC) president Lynn Morton resigned from her position. Filling her role while the cabinet searches for a permanent replacement is Bill Christy, a WWC alum.
An added complication to the search process is the cabinet itself, being filled almost entirely with interim employees. The provost, Jay Roberts, is the only remaining permanent faculty member on the cabinet.
Although this may seem disconcerting to some, Christy assured that this is a normal transition process at colleges across the country. He spoke with confidence on the matter that the relationship between the next president and cabinet would not be affected by its current status.
“I don’t think it should affect the dynamics of how they perform their job,” Christy said. “Alan Russell is our interim vice president for administration and finance and (chief financial officer). His whole career — most of his career — has been as an interim. He actually was an interim here a number of years ago. But his job is to do that job and he knows how to do that job.”
Although an interim position is expected to be short, this timeframe does not limit Christy’s goals during his presidency. His goals include promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, increasing community dialogue and sourcing more funding for the college.
“I think about it all day every day, all night every night,” Christy said. “That is the focus of my thinking. That’s the president’s job — is to make sure the enterprise runs. In our society and where we are, that means money.”
Additionally, Christy divulged that WWC will be partnering with the Southern Equity Collective to do analytical research on how to both measure current DEI structures present and expand upon them. This project is being overseen by M.Z. Yehudah in addition to his work on the Wilson Inclusion Diversity and Equity (WIDE) crew.
A common hope held by Christy and Russell is to connect with the student body as much as possible.
“I think that particularly (COVID-19) sort of isolated people by necessity,” Christy said. “There’s a number of other sorts of ideas that I've put out and another one is that Warren Wilson needs to — the phrase I use is ‘have eyes that look out and not in’ — to look out to the world and realize we’re part of the world. We are educating and training our students. They’re here for a short time and then they’re out into the world doing whatever they’re doing.”
Russell stated that if students have issues and questions that need to be addressed that they should come to his office or have meetings with him. Interim Dean of Student Life, Tacci Smith, also holds space on various weekdays at lunch time for students to approach her with questions or ideas.
“If people think that this thing called the ‘administration’ is causing problems for the students or whatever, then in my opinion they have a responsibility to find out,” Russell said. “They may be right. We’re people and we make mistakes, but I want to be available.”
After discussing the intense implications of climate change and the danger it poses, Russell shared one of his goals for his time at WWC.
“(Solving issues) takes somebody to listen, willing to learn,” Russell said. “There’s a lot of science involved, there’s engineering involved and politics. It has to start with a passion for getting the thing done. I’m hoping, if I contribute in some small way to Warren Wilson, to keep it chugging along and help it grow, that there will be people graduating from this place who will be able and willing to get involved in some of that stuff.”
A significant amount of time and thought across the Board of Trustees and the WWC cabinet is to enhance the community dialogue at WWC and to create more meaningful reasons for students to remain at the college.
Russell plans to attend WWC basketball games once the season begins. Christy also wishes to eat in Gladfelter regularly in order to interact with students on a regular basis.
They can be reached through email at alan.russell@warren-wilson.edu and bchristy@warren-wilson.edu.