TIM BORCHERS

WHEELING — West Liberty University’s next president is a man accustomed to marathons, and he indicates he is ready to hit the ground running.

The WLU Board of Governors on Friday unanimously approved Timothy Borchers to be the school’s 38th president, succeeding interim president Cathy Monteroso.

Borchers, 53, is the current vice president for academic affairs at Peru State College in Nebraska. An avid runner, he completed the New York City Marathon last November. He is a native of South Dakota.

The two-year contract approved by the Board of Governors Fridays sets Borchers’ start date as July 1, and extends his employment through June 30, 2025.

Borchers was not on campus, but did address the board of governors and media via video conference following the announcement.

“My philosophy is to be very transparent, to be very open, to be present and to get to know the people I will be working with. That includes faculty, staff, students and community members,” he said. “I really want to engage them and try to connect with them.”

Borchers added his first order of business will be to talk to people, take good notes and report back to the university what he learns. This will be the start of a strategic planning process for the campus, he explained.

Borchers and his wife, Susanne Williams, also a professor at Peru State College, plan to visit the WLU campus June 5-9 prior to their move to West Virginia. They will reside in the WLU president’s home known as Colonial Heights, and Borcher said they are excited to begin hosting parties and social events there.

“We will be very comfortable living here,” he said. “We will appreciate having people to the president’s house to build relationships, to celebrate their successes, and to recognize the important work that is being done. That will be a very comfortable and a very important part of the job.”

He noted there are similarities between WLU and Peru State College in that both were the first institutions of higher education to be established in their states.

“West Liberty University has a 187-year history of changing student lives and enriching the communities in the surrounding communities, and I’m excited to be a part of that,” he added.

Borchers holds both a doctoral and master’s degree in communication from Wayne State University in Detroit, and a bachelor’s degree in speech communication from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.

In the past, Borchers has been a speech team coach.

He was impressed after being told about the Wheeling Park High School speech and debate team, and how it has won 43 consecutive state titles.

WLU retained the AGB Search firm to help them find its new president, and beginning in January its representative began interviewing staff, students and community members about what they wanted to see in their next president.

There were 59 candidates who applied for the position, and these were eventually whittled down to four finalists by a committee appointed by the BOG. Tom Cervone, chairman of the search committee, said while all the candidates were qualified for the job, Borchers was the clear choice in that he stood out “in just about everything.”

“We really did a lot of due diligence to make sure he is going to work out, and I think he will,” Cervone said. “I’ve interviewed him, I’ve sat with him and talked with him, and we’re going in the right direction for sure.

“He is young, he’s enthusiastic and his attitude is terrific. He knows sort of what West Liberty is like because the population is sort of like where he has worked before. We want to create a big difference with that because we want to grow the student population, and he’ll do it.”

Richard Lucas, president of the WLU board of governors, said during the search Borchers was always engaged, and always available when contacted.

“He knew everything about West Liberty University from the first interview,” Lucas continued. “It was like he had been on the campus for a long time already.”

During his tenure at Peru State College, the school achieved its highest first-year retention rate and enrolled two of the largest first-year student classes in the past 30 years, according to information provided by WLU. He spearheaded the campus migration to new retention software and added new academic programs and partnerships.

Borchers’ hiring comes after the BOG declined to extend former president W. Franklin Evans’ contract, ending his tenure after two tumultuous years. In that time, Evans had to apologize for plagiarizing sections of several speeches. He also had a vote of no confidence against him by WLU’s faculty senate. A survey conducted with faculty also showed that faculty members had very little confidence in Evans’ leadership ability and personal integrity. Monteroso began serving as interim president in January.