WSU freezes some hiring and raises as new president starts campus tours in Tri-Cities
Washington State University President Elizabeth Cantwell wasn’t worried about getting her crimson-colored, wingtip shoes a little dirty on the second day of her new job.
Crossing a grassy lawn on the Richland campus Wednesday, Cantwell reminisced on the various school colors she’s previously worn at Utah State University, University of Arizona and Arizona State University.
But crimson is a better fit these days. Her daughter is a current graduate student at WSU Pullman and previously worked nearby at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
“I did miss the red,” she said, “and the WSU Crimson is a lovely color.”
Cantwell is wasting no time getting to work. This week, she kicked off her statewide “whistle stop” tour which will take her to all five physical WSU campuses over the next week.
She travels to Spokane on Thursday, Everett on Friday, Vancouver on Monday and back to Pullman on Tuesday.
She began it with a daylong stop at the WSU Tri-Cities campus in Richland, the Mid Columbia’s hub of research on clean energy, viticulture and technology — a fitting place for someone who previously oversaw Arizona’s $825 million research portfolio and worked at national labs.
“In a nutshell, my impression is this campus is critical to serving the needs of regional and local jobs,” Cantwell said, mentioning its relationship with PNNL.
But the Richland campus also plays an important role in serving first-generation college students and working-class families, she said. About half of students are first generation or people of color.
WSU Tri-Cities serves about 1,500 students with more than 20 undergraduate programs and 30 graduate programs.
As Cantwell and staff from Pullman walked up to the Elson S. Floyd Building at 9:30 a.m., they were greeted with a modest and cheerful crowd of staff and students, as well as mascot Butch T. Cougar.
A trio held a sign that read, “Welcome Dr. Cantwell.” Chancellor Sandra Haynes welcomed her at the steps with a handshake and hug.
“She is bold and innovative with vast experience both inside and outside of higher education,” Haynes said. “I believe her thoughtful intelligence, her clear dedication to life-long learning and her passion for our land-grant mission will serve WSU and WSU Tri-Cities very well.”
“I needed to touch base with every campus immediately,” Cantwell said. “I needed everyone to know I care about every campus, and the way to do that is to physically show up for even a little bit of time and get rolling.”
Bracing for cuts
In an interview with the Tri-City Herald, Cantwell didn’t shy away from acknowledging the grim financial reality that Washington state government is working with, as well as new pressures from the Trump administration.
The Washington Legislature — which is in the final days of budget negotiations for the next biennium and is looking to rectify a four-year, $16 billion shortfall — has proposed a 3% cut to WSU at its discretion.
Cantwell says cuts in aggregate could be closer to 4-6%.
What does that look like for the Tri-Cities?
Cantwell wouldn’t go into specifics, but said their satellite campuses are here to stay and serve their purpose and missions.
“It’s not a matter of, ‘Oh, we’re going to pick one campus over the others,” kind of a thing. It’s really, ‘What’s the local mission and let’s make sure we continue to do that,’” she said.
Cantwell and other WSU leaders beginning this week ordered temporary freezes on hiring non-essential faculty and staff, on out-of-cycle salary increases, and on non-essential travel and training as it braces for uncertain times and shifting investments from the state and federal government.
She called these “strategic pauses” a natural and necessary approach to a challenging situation, allowing them to protect current workers.
“It really is a pause until we understand the lay of the land financially a little better, and we all make agreements with one another about the strategic value of each location and each program,” she said. “We’re not going to take five years to do that. We don’t have time to do that.”
As WSU engages the Legislature in budgeting, it’s prioritizing cost-of-living adjustments for its faculty, professional staff and union-represented employees. On the capital side, its looking for legislators to fund various projects, including “campus infrastructure upgrades” at Tri-Cities, Pullman, Spokane and Vancouver.
The university requested from the Legislature nearly $715 million for 2025-27, including nearly $28 million for employee retention and compensation.
Gov. Bob Ferguson’s proposed budget would provide just $683 million. Ferguson has also proposed one unpaid furlough day per month for state employees, which could equate to a 5% reduction in pay if applied to higher education.
Pressures from Trump administration
Cantwell acknowledged ongoing “federal chaos” that has trickled down to the Evergreen State.
“We’re going to see a combination of challenges that mean we have to make very thoughtful, sort-of strategic decisions about how we move forward,” she said.
A shakeup of grant funding has resulted in millions of dollars of WSU research either being interrupted or put on hold, including here in Richland.
At least eight active grants awarded to WSU have been terminated, per a March 13 university news release. That includes seven from USAID.
The Trump administration has vowed to defund all higher education institutions that promote broad DEI diversity and inclusion initiatives.
The university’s civil rights office has encouraged departments to review their programs for compliance with federal and state civil rights laws. WSU is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or ethnicity, and sex.
“Our mission as a land grant has always been, for 135 years, to be inclusive,” Cantwell said. “We were created, and will continue, to serve the children of working people all across the U.S.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has confirmed at least 300 foreign student visas have been revoked as part of the Trump Administration’s crackdown on college students protesting the Palestinian genocide.
Students in the U.S. on visas and green cards have also been reportedly detained for expressing constitutionally protected free speech.
None of those students are from WSU or the University of Washington in Seattle, KUOW reports.
Cantwell says student safety remains a top priority for WSU, and that leaders continue to monitor the impacts from Trump administration decisions.
WSU’s first female president
Cantwell is the first woman to hold the position of president in WSU history.
While it’s an important marker, she said she’s not thinking much about it.
“I think there are people for whom having a woman in this role is heartening. It is surprising that a university that’s this old has never had a female president because it’s not that unusual, and it certainly isn’t a driving force for me,” she said.
“I am cognizant that I represent something to a lot of young women out there,” Cantwell added.
She comes to WSU from Utah State, a system she oversaw as president with a $1.3 billion operating budget spanning 30 different campuses.
Her WSU bio highlights several achievements there, including overseeing a record half-billion dollars in sponsored research expenditures, 10% increases in student scholarship funding and breaking ground on new construction.
Before Utah State, Cantwell was a senior leader in research and innovation at both Arizona and Arizona State. In just three years at Arizona State, she increased the annual research from $435 million to $680 million.
She’s held leadership roles at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos national labs.
Her work advanced research in energy, defense and space exploration, collaborating with the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, NASA and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
She holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from University of California, Berkeley.
