President Gestring prepares for first year in office, welcomes students

As students become familiar with new classes, meal plans and roommates, President Gestring is continuing to familiarize herself with her new role as the President of the University.

Gestring started as the university’s 18th president June 22 and is set to have an inauguration next semester. She said the most exciting part of onboarding has been preparing for students to return.

Student Government Association president Josh Sorbe said he is part of Gestring’s transition team. He said the purpose of the transition team is to help introduce the USD community and the President and make sure everyone feels welcomed.

“She had me send her 10 student organizations to go meet with so she’ll be reaching out to those,” Sorbe said. “She’s going to do a forum in the CDC. She’s coming to SGA on September 4th.” 

Sorbe said all of these stops are part of Gestring’s listening campaign. He said he picked 10 of the largest organizations on campus for her to start with.

Dean of Students, Kim Grieve said Gestring is attentive to the details of student life.

“She is very very interested in student success, student retention, student recruitment and she is also really concerned about the price of college and making sure that students have scholarships and all so they can afford to come to USD,” Grieve said. “She has a great vision and is on her listening tour currently trying to get as much information from different areas.” 

A twist on tradition 

Scott Pohlson, the Vice President of Enrollment, Marketing and University Relations was on the Presidental hiring committee. He said Gestring is exactly the same was she was through the interview process.

“She’s not any different than what she was in those interviews,” he said. “I think her core values are rooted in who we are as a state… she’s a hard decision maker. She knows she can’t just be the next Jim Abbott. She has to be the next Sheila Gestring and that makes me proud to work for her.” 

Gestring said she is excited to continue participating in all the USD events and traditions she has attended for the last decade.

“I’m accustomed to going to the tailgates and going to the games and attending all the events on campus so I wouldn’t want to change that since I’ve been doing that for about a decade,” she said. 

In addition to continuing open office hours and attending USD events, Gestring has also started a twitter account to communicate with the USD community.

Plans for change 

Along with her listening tour with departments and student organizations, Gestring is hoping to use multiple methods to receive feedback from faculty and students.

“I’m also contemplating having just a listening session perhaps scheduled once a week over in the MUC or something central to campus where anyone can just stop by or grab a cup of coffee and just chat,” Gestring said.

Since Gestring has been working at the university for the last 10 years and has some ideas of areas that could use improvement right away, one of those areas being funding for the fine arts department. 

“It’s difficult to raise that money. Public support is difficult. Revenues are perhaps not where we would like them to be as a state,” she said. 

Gestring also said enrollment makes a difference for finding funding for new supplies and resources for the Fine Arts.

“The hardest part I think for Dean Skow is getting those enrollment numbers up so that he has the resources to be able to support those purchases as well, and obviously we are working very diligently on that,” she said.

Another area Gestring hopes to improve is retention of students.

“I think its incumbent on us that as a university when we recruit students we work diligently to keep them and get them to graduation,” Gestring. “That is definitely something I plan to spend a lot of time working on this semester.”

Pohlson said he is excited to see what new ideas will be brought to the table.

“What she brings is a perspective that our institution can be better than what we are,” he said. “Even though we’ve had a really good run with President Abbott, it’s time to think differently about USD.”