Joe Whitehead, Jr., one of four candidates for the position of UW Oshkosh’s next chancellor, said that overcoming obstacles through communication and cooperation will be key to the university’s success during an open panel April 7.
“We need to take the challenges that we have and turn those challenges into opportunities,” he said. “We find another way around the challenge and it becomes an opportunity.”
Whitehead said that there needs to be a focus on staff and faculty at the university.
“When I looked at all the reports that were done analyzing … each university, I read the reports for UWO, and there was one thing missing: It didn’t talk about the faculty people.”
Whitehead also said he believes that instructors can help improve the quality of education in the classroom through external experiences in their fields.
“Can we have faculty and staff go out externally and engage with what’s going on there?” he said. “They bring it back to the classroom. And they then make what they’re teaching relevant to the students.”
He said that the location of UWO can make this more practical, and can help to bolster the appeal of the university to both prospective and current students.
“UWO is in a great location compared to some other universities,” Whitehead said. “There’s a manufacturing base, there’s a population base, we have a river run through town. I thought I was in Mississippi for a while.”
He said that he’s opposed to scrapping everything and starting completely fresh, which is an approach that is often utilized by new chancellors and other new administrative officials.
“Not the way to do business,” he said. “You have to assess what’s already there and see if the pieces fit or not. … So I’ll go through that process of looking at a leadership team.”
Whitehead said he sees a well-functioning team as essential to making informed, rational decisions.
“I label myself as a servant leader,” he said. “I don’t know everything, and so I need to have the input of others with expertise. … Not any one person can understand all the complex information out there. You can provide the opportunity for the team members to provide input and value that input.”
This doesn’t only happen within the university’s administration, though. Whitehead said that getting input from all levels of authority on campus, such as chairs and departments across campus, is essential.
“Shared governance determines how innovative a university can be,” he said.
Being open and communicative, Whitehead said, allows governance on all levels to function well.
“There are restraints on how things are done,” he said. “But, again, communication, communication, communication. … Let’s think about internal communication and how we can maximize it and bring people along. And I go back to why. If we can explain why we’re doing things, that will help also in building consensus and building buy-in as we move forward as an institution.”
Whitehead currently serves as the senior advisor to the President for Regional Science Initiatives and as a physics professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
His past administrative experiences include serving as chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and as an associate and dean of the College of Science and Technology at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Whitehead has also served as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at North Carolina A&T State University, senior advisor for research for the University of North Carolina System and provost and senior vice president at Bowling Green State University.
He earned his B.S. degree in physics from Delta State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Kent State University.
From there, Whitehead was a research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute before he joined the Department of Physics & Astronomy faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Whitehead’s full CV can be viewed at uwosh.edu/chancellor/wp-content/uploads/sites/69/2025/04/Whitehead-Joe-CV.pdf.
