2018 Matthew Holland A Presidential Parting

A presidential

parting Matthew Holland wraps up years of progress at UVU, and in education across Utah County

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Daily Herald April 29, 2018 3

Holland prepares to say goodbye to UVU BRALEY DODSON

M Daily Herald

atthew Holland was driving home from directing a study abroad for Brigham Young University when he saw the words “Utah Valley University” emblazoned on the side of the UCCU Center.

That was his first indicator something different was going on in Orem.

The second came not long after when someone knocked on his door and told him they thought he’d be a great president of UVU. “I just sort of chuckled because this was nowhere on my radar screen,” Holland said.

He was focused on his professional work at BYU at the time. His research was going well. The kids were young and he didn’t have professional wonderlust.

He thanked the visitor and said while he was flattered, it wasn’t the thing for him at the moment. Then he talked to his wife, Paige, who said he’d be a perfect fit and more people started to talk to him about the job. He was intrigued, was nominated for the job and allowed his name to go forward.

Holland is the son of Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and former president of BYU who led the university from 1980 to 1989. His upbringing meant Matthew Holland had seen the underbelly of administrative life and knew he’d have to be committed in order to make it work.

He still didn’t fully know what to expect.

“Despite my upbringing and a little front row seat on this, until you’re in it, you just don’t know the vortex of issues and pressure,” Holland said.

“Nothing really quite prepares you for it. You have to jump in and do it.”

Holland stepped into the role of UVU president in 2009, one year after UVU became a university. He will leave the university in June to be a mission president in Raleigh, North Carolina for the lds church.

During Holland’s nine years at UVU he has overseen the university during its rapid growth as it became the largest university in Utah and increased its

graduates by 45 percent.

He’s been at the university as it’s added 26 new bachelor’s degrees and six master’s degrees. During his tenure, the university has also established three academic centers, started presidential internships and increased the number of full-time faculty from 476 to more than 670.

The university has doubled its campus footprint with the purchase of 225 acres in Vineyard and almost tripled its endowment, as well. It’s built a handful of new structures, including a performing arts building currently under construction, the Andrea and James Clarke Classroom Building, a student life and wellness center, science building, an autism center, a library and others.

Throughout it all, he’s tried to stay balanced. Living on campus means he can quickly get home to have dinner with the family on most nights and he’s rarely missed one of his kid’s ball games. He has a rule where he won’t be gone for more than two nights in a row for campus events — unless it’s the final two weeks of April, his busiest time of the year.

But all it takes is a walk through campus with the family dog to help clear his head. His route starts at his home and goes downhill, through the heart of campus. He looks over the western sunset beaming over the mountains and continues down the canal and stream to the trees.

“It is amazing what that little loop will do for you when you need a little boost,” Holland said.

With graduation on Thursday, he’s having to admit he’s entering the goodbye phase of his administration, something he’s resisted since announcing in November he’d be leaving.

After the debates and speeches and long nights, he’ll look over the sea of green before him. All the other issues melt away for him in those moments, when he’s hit with why he does what he does for a living.

And it’s all ending.

“It does make it more tender for me that I will look out at those graduates and realize this is the last time I will get to see this,” Holland said.

He came UVU wanting to expand opportunities for students without sacri-

EVAN COBB, DAILY HERALD

UVU President Matthew Holland smiles as he listens to a student (not pictured) on April 24, in Orem. ficing inclusiveness or the university’s open enrollment model. The university also faced a growing student body, but not growing resources. He wanted UVU to stay a serious university while still being open to all.

“Not only could we do it, but we have done it and we are now a national leader,” Holland said.

The university will be hosting a national summit on dual mission education in May, which will draw leaders from across the nation and Canada to the campus.

“The world is coming to Orem, Utah to figure out what’s the best way to do this dual mission model because the rest of the nation is waking up to the fact it’s not the silver bullet, it’s not the solution to all problems, but it is a solution to the problem we are facing in higher education,” Holland said.

But Holland hasn’t gone without

controversy or criticism. The university has faced anger from neighbors as it has grown, faculty have expressed disappointment about sabbatical changes and the LGBTQ community has questioned him following Holland’s signing of a “friend of the court” brief opposing gay marriage in 2015.

Holland said his way to continue past those moments has been to share his vision of the university and hope to reflects the majority while staying civil and collaborating with those he disagrees with.

“I knew going into it that every university presidency is going to have those moments and those issues,” Holland said.

Life will slow down for Holland following graduation as he wraps up loose ends and finalizes projects. He won’t have a vacation between jobs and will finish up a piece he started working on during his summer at Oxford University last year.

4 HOLLAND

UVU’s first lady leaves behind a legacy of helping women BRALEY DODSON

Daily Herald

Early his his presidency, Utah Valley University President Matthew Holland came home one day with a discouraged look on his face. Female participation and graduation rates at UVU were low, he explained, and that’s when inspiration struck first lady Paige Holland.

“I knew just instantly that this is what I wanted to make as my main focus,” she said.

A lot has changed in the nine years since the Hollands moved out of their home on Locust Lane in Provo with their four children and into an on-campus home at UVU. The Hollands have watched the view from their home change as the university has evolved, adding buildings and degrees and bringing distinguished guests into both the university and their home.

And while Matthew Holland’s role was laid out as the president of the university, Paige Holland’s role was more open. She’d spoken to former presidential spouses, some of who decided to lay low during their spouse’s time in office, and realized she could go in any direction she wanted.

“For me, I wanted to make a contribution,” Holland said.

Her own degree is in communications, and she wanted to show women what completing their education can do for them.

“I know how much my degree has meant to me and I use my degree literally every day,” Holland said.

Life is greener

Paige Holland was brought in with her husband for the last month of interviews for the UVU job. Going into a group interview, she decided she wanted a green jacket.

During the interview, someone asked if she was ready to leave BYU (where Matthew Holland taught) behind. Paige Holland stood up, clutched her jacket, and asked, “Why do you think I wore my Wolverine green jacket?”

The cameras snapped, and the photo was everywhere.

Now, she jokingly refers to her closet as “the Emerald City” and she has kept an eye out for anything green she or the president could wear.

The job launched the family to a

DOMINIC VALENTE, DAILY HERALD

Paige Holland shoots nails into the baseboards of a house while students at UVU and the Habitat for Humanity group help to build a house for Kimberly Harter on May 10, 2017, in Provo. new level of business as they started to raise their four children on campus, placing them in the heart of athletic events, the arts and academic lectures.

“We did not see that change in our life coming, but we are sure glad it came,” Holland said. “We’ve loved it.”

Throughout the transition she set her primary role as a mother to keep life as close to normal as possible for the children. That included carpools, PTA meetings and being a football mom.

It also included advocacy work for female students that took on a life of its own.

Girl power

“I think one of the most remarkable things about Paige is how early she identified this as a cause she wanted to be involved in,” said Tara Ivie, the senior director of the Women’s Success Center at UVU. “It is something that is near and dear to her heart and something she lives every day.”

Female students have traditionally enrolled and graduated at lower num-

bers than men at UVU, with female students making up 46.5 percent of UVU students in 2017, up about 2 percent from a few years earlier, according to the university’s 2017 Fact book.

The Women’s Success Center opened in 2011 to link women with scholarships, coaching, child care and advocacy.

Holland started leadership lunches for female students and became regularly involved in Habitat for Humanity’s annual build that includes a week of work with the women of UVU, where she mastered a nail gun.

She also supported mentoring opportunities for students.

“She doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk,” Ivie said. “When she is committed to a cause, she shows up, is there not for publicity, she is there because she is genuinely invested. She’ll take the time to support the project, to support the students.

Whatever it is she is investing in, she’s fully there.”

In March, the UVU Women’s Leadership Luncheon raised more than $280,000 to fund scholarships for female students at UVU — more than any other UVU fundraising event had ever raised before.

Then came the announcement of the Paige B. Holland Endowed Scholarship Fund and that she would be the newest honorary member of the Utah Women’s Walk UVU Women of Influence Gallery.

The scholarship came as a complete surprise to her, and the decision came easy to the Women’s Success Center.

“We knew that her story and her legacy is one that we want to live on long after the Hollands leave us,” Ivie said.

Raising graduation rates for women has included a push for a cultural change in the area and letting women know a degree is still important and can improve their lives even if they don’t plan to pursue a career.

Ivie has immense gratitude for the Hollands’ work with the center, which used to be a women’s crisis center.

“I believe that without them, we would not have come as far as we did,” Ivie said.

Matthew Holland calls the center one of the most cherished parts of his administration, and he always knew Paige Holland would use her voice for good.

“I couldn’t be more pleased and impressed,” Matthew Holland said.

“I am totally unsurprised because it’s Paige and I knew her gifts and abilities going into it.”

It’s all been volunteer work for Paige Holland who is paid $1 a year

by UVU in order to qualify as an employee to drive the president’s car.

She wants to be remembered as someone who helped women seek and finish a college degree.

“I think that our legacy is that we gave everything we had to build our family and to build this university for the sake of the community,” Paige Holland said.

Although their future isn’t clear, Paige Holland hopes to one day return to the community they grew up in and call home.

“A big part of our hearts will always be here,” she said.

Daily Herald April 29, 2018 5

DAILY HERALD FILE PHOTO

Matthew S. Holland, president of Utah Valley University, walks into the Marriott Center before Brigham Young University’s commencement ceremony in Provo on April 23, 2015.

Making a mark on BYU faculty BRALEY DODSON

K

Daily Herald

elly Patterson remembers passing Matthew Holland at the base of the Spencer W. Kimball Tower at Brigham Young University. It was 4 a.m. Patterson was coming into work.

Holland was just leaving.

Today, Matthew Holland is known for being the sixth president of Utah Valley University, where he has been for the past nine years and helped the institution evolve into a university. Before he was at UVU, he was up the road at BYU, where he had been a student, the son of a university president and an associate professor of political science.

Holland received his undergraduate degree in political science from BYU before gaining a graduate certificate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied ethical leadership in an international context. He received a M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Duke University before eventually returning to teach at BYU. As a student, Holland was known as being bright, hard-working and dependable with a keen sense of humor.

It was a combination that made him a

desirable teacher’s assistant for David Magleby, a professor in BYU’s political science department. Holland was Magleby’s TA when Magleby and his wife took a group on a Washington, D.C. seminar, which formed a relationship with implications beyond the trip.

Magleby wasn’t just Holland’s professor. He also lived down the street from the Bateman family, and Holland had an interest in one Bateman in particular. While Holland was studying at Duke, he called Magleby up to hash out a plan. Holland shipped over a note, had the Maglebys pick up some ice cream and had Magleby’s son doorbell ditch the note and ice cream on the doorstep for Paige Bateman to find.

“I think it had the desired effect,” Magleby said.

Considering Paige Bateman is now Paige Holland, he’s right, and Magleby likes to think he had a hand in their courtship.

Years later, when Holland was announced as UVU’s next president, Magleby wasn’t surprised.

“He has a vision,” he said. “He works well with people and diverse groups of people.”

Holland was a popular — and tough

— professor, according to his online reviews. His status on ratemyprofessors. com, a popular professor-rating website, touts a time when Holland had students present their semester papers at his home and followed up with a pancake dinner. Students also praised his lecturing abilities, warned about his tough exams and called him a “champ,” “genius” and a “stud.”

Holland’s teaching career is immortalized in the “Roots of Knowledge” mural in the Fulton Library at UVU, where Holland is depicted as teaching in a futuristic classroom while wearing suspenders and a green tie.

Ray Christensen, an associate professor of political science at BYU, remembers Holland being liked by students.

“He cared about his students, was pretty committed to high-quality teaching and seemed to work well with students and care about them and their growth,” Christensen said.

He remembers Holland’s people skills.

“He’s the kind of person who can listen to both sides and craft and compromise,” Christensen said.

Patterson, who was the chair of the political science department when

Holland was a professor, said Holland had the ability to see the connections between his own research and other areas of political science.

“He is a gifted professor,” Patterson, who is on sabbatical in Europe, wrote via email. “He has a way to synthesize complex ideas and to help students see their importance.”

Patterson said Holland was bright, personable, fun, responsible and was a contributor the department who was always willing to read others’ research.

Holland wasn’t just popular in the classroom. He was a formidable basketball player on the faculty intramural team and was one-half of the team’s “twin towers.”

“Student teams had a hard time moving them away from the boards — much to their frustration, I think,” Patterson said.

As Holland starts the next chapter of his life, Magleby said the parents of missionaries in North Carolina are lucky.

“The children, sons and daughters, grandchildren, will have a really in tune and empathetic, kind mission president,” Magleby said. “He will greatly bless their lives.”

6 HOLLAND

President Holland through the eyes of his interns

ISAAC HALE, DAILY HERALD

Utah Valley University presidential interns, from left, Tanner Anderson, McKenna Finch and KC Hooker pose for a portrait during a farewell lunch for the UVU presidential interns on April 20, at Riverside Country Club in Provo.

BRALEY DODSON

M Daily Herald

cKenna Finch was initially nervous around Utah Valley University President Matthew Holland. Then, he’d say her name, or joke about how her canned soup lunch was better than what he’d had to eat, and she’d remember he wasn’t just the university’s president, he was also human.

“He is exactly what you expect him to be,” said Finch, a presidential intern. “As I’ve gone through my college experience, I see him interact with students, care about students, care about the way UVU is run.”

Finch, who interns for Val Peterson, UVU’s vice president for finance and administration, is one of several presidential interns at UVU, a group of students selected each academic year to be mentored by UVU’s top administrators.

The presidential interns are en-

twined in the professional lives of UVU’s administrators. They drive them to the airport when needed.

They handle large, sensitive projects.

And they get to see a side of the university’s president most students only get glimpses of.

“He is a leader who leads not only by example, but by friendship and by relationships,” Finch said. “Sometimes he does correct people, but he’s so loving and he’s so kind and I’ve never seen anybody as fair as he is and who strives for the same level of excellence in all aspects of his life.”

Tanner Anderson, a presidential intern who works with Justin Jones, Holland’s chief of staff, originally thought Holland was untouchable.

Then he found that every time he’d gawk at Holland, the president would ask him how he was.

“He’s very good at making you feel more comfortable,” Anderson said.

The students are thrust into the internships without knowing what to

expect, and tasks vary between the different administrators.

Through the process, KC Hooker, who is Holland’s presidential intern, has learned Holland is forgiving and gracious.

“I expected him to be presidential, which he is, but he is also lighthearted,” Hooker said. “He made sure there is not this thick cloud of seriousness that follows him everywhere he goes.”

Hooker appreciates how Holland takes time to mentor the interns and respects Holland’s ability to steer meetings back on topic.

He also likes how Holland will surprise a student once a week by buying their lunch.

“It is easy for presidents to get isolated in their administration, and he is always breaking out of that,” Hooker said.

Anderson said Holland has taught him to believe in leadership and leaders’ abilities to change things.

“The president, he has a very high standard of excellence for himself and for staff,” Anderson said.

The next set of presidential interns will serve under a different president. Holland announced in the fall he would leave the university this summer to be a mission president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in North Carolina.

At a UVU National Presidential Advisory Board meeting, Anderson watched Holland give his final report of his administration to the board, where he pushed for UVU’s momentum to continue on and tried to stay away from his words being a farewell.

“I just remember seeing him stand and him expressing that he deeply cares about this university and where’s it’s at, and the urge to continue to focus on students and help them, of vulnerability, and real passion for his legacy and UVU’s momentum will be ingrained in me for a long time,” Anderson said.

Daily Herald April 29, 2018 XXXXXXXXXXXXX 7

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