Arts & Sciences alumna Suzanne Shipley, at right, with her husband, Randall Wadsworth, and their dogs, Roxy and Racer.

Full Circle

10.16.2020 | Britton Drown

There is a distinct pride one can't help but glean from Dr. Suzanne Shipley (Class of '74 & '76) as she discusses her childhood home. The memories of a young girl coming of age on the plains of the West Texas panhandle in Lubbock are still rich. So much so, that the lifetime scholar has a way of transporting any audience back to the seats of the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum—the stage where she consumed Texas Tech University basketball games with her family. There are also the many musicals and ballets the local university would host on its sprawling campus.

See, even at an early age, it seems as though Shipley possessed an acute awareness of the role universities play in their communities.

"When I think about my relationship to West Texas," she recalls. "The cultural destination for my family was always the university."

In fact, Shipley proudly makes a point to say that she was just 10 years old when she took her first classes on the Texas Tech campus. During those childhood summers, Shipley's parents enrolled their budding student in 'kinderschule,' a former Texas Tech program that trained future teachers to instruct German to elementary students.

"It very well could have been a formative experience," Shipley says.

Indeed, kinderschule was the first, but certainly not the only class she would take at her hometown university. Alongside her brother, Wesley, Shipley would go on to earn both a bachelor's and a master's degree in German from Texas Tech's College of Arts & Sciences. As Shipley would say, perhaps kinderschule was a foreshadowing of her impressive scholastic career.

Today, she is serving in her sixth year as president of Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas—an institution that in August executed an official memorandum of understanding to become the fifth university in the Texas Tech University System, pending approval from the Texas Legislature and the governor at the upcoming 87th legislative session in 2021.

"It has come full circle," Shipley said, that West Texas pride still emanating from her voice.

To understand how this trajectory took its route, Shipley first must take you back to her undergraduate experience on the Texas Tech campus. Even to this day, she can quickly recall four professors by name that had a profound impact on her experience.

One of those was Idris Traylor, a longtime Texas Tech professor of Russian and Eastern European history. It was in Traylor's class that Shipley recalls her senses awakening to the breadth of opportunity before her.

"You are sitting in Lubbock, Texas," Shipley said. "And he is talking about the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and trying to make people who grew up in Lubbock even understand what that was... It is just amazing that somebody can transport someone who has never been to those places through their teaching. I think that is what catapulted me into education, was realizing that you can just open up worlds for people that are just remarkable."

Shipley was indeed captivated—and motivated by the scholastic experiences at her hometown university. And it was inside those Texas Tech classrooms that she started envisioning a life of her own, in which she could enrich the lives of young people.

Just like Traylor and others did for her.

Shipley would go on to earn her doctorate in German before beginning her career in 1986 as a professor and eventually program director of the University Honors program at the University of Cincinnati.

While serving as an honors German professor, Shipley (pictured at right) was selected as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow. The fellowship is a customized learning experience enabling participants to immerse themselves in the study and practice of leadership and experience the culture, policies, and decision-making processes of another institution.

"I noticed that I was really good at bringing groups together, and I didn't mind public speaking," Shipley said. "That started my trajectory."

Through the fellowship, which took place at Arizona State University, Shipley recognized and refined her natural leadership traits.

That call to university leadership would propel Shipley to the role of Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Northern Arizona University—a position she assumed in 1995 leading 240 faculty members at the university's largest college. Six years later, doors continued to open as she took a position as Vice President of Academic Affairs at Notre Dame University of Maryland.

Her first opportunity to lead a university as president came in 2007 when Shipley was appointed as the 15th President of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. She helped lead several projects across the public liberal arts university campus including its official designation as Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) campus. Only 29 schools in the nation hold the special designation.

She would remain at Shepherd for eight years, until receiving a call from one of the only universities that she still longed to serve. That school was MSU Texas, in Wichita Falls.

"I have always kept an eye on this particular university," Shipley said. "I really loved being at Shepherd, but I did want to get home. I wanted to be able to look after Mom, I wanted to be around our nieces and nephews as they were beginning to consider having families. It was the only job I applied for."

The return to Texas was a poignant moment. It provided the opportunity to care for and look after her mother, Mary Jane, who passed away this August. Mary Jane was also a Red Raider who earned a master's degree from Texas Tech and taught math classes as an adjunct professor.

Today, Shipley is in the midst of her sixth year at the helm of MSU Texas. She prides herself on being an accessible leader, frequently walking through campus and engaging with students. She also makes a point to infuse leadership traits in others, pointing out that four of her colleagues have gone on to be university presidents themselves.

"Toward the end of your career, I think you celebrate your ability to infuse leadership into others," Shipley said. "That is one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone."

That leadership style was put on full display this year, as Shipley thoughtfully and diplomatically navigated her team, along with MSU Texas' 6,000 students, through the COVID-19 pandemic.

It's clear, Shipley identifies her role not just by the various responsibilities that define a presidency. She sees the impact she makes as reaching much further, and much broader. Leadership, as Shipley defines it, is embodying the same passion, imagination, and creativity that those professors at Texas Tech gifted to her many years ago.

"The sense of identification started at Tech," Shipley said. "When I could sit in the classroom and see myself in those professors and see a new self because of them. What better gift could you give than that?"