LEDE: 

On January 26, 2023, Seattle Pacific University announced its newest president, Dr. Deana Porterfield, who would officially take office over the summer. With the start of a new school year, Porterfield is prepared to lead the SPU community as the first permanent president in 2 years.

The Falcon’s Antonio Nevarez spoke with Porterfield to get to know her more as a person and to find out how she plans to engage with the community. 

NEVAREZ:

Dr. Deana Porterfield is SPU’s 12th president in the university’s 132-year history. She joins us 2 years after the previous president, Dan Martin, resigned in 2021. Porterfield previously served as the president of Roberts Wesleyan University in New York. Although she’s joining us from the East Coast, Porterfield is originally from a small town in California that she calls home. 

PORTERFIELD:

So, I was born in San Francisco at a hospital for unwed mothers and adopted into a family that lived in Watsonville, California. If you’ve ever had Martinelli’s apple cider, that is from Watsonville. And it is located just between Santa Cruz and Monterey. 

NEVAREZ: 

As a young adult, Porterfield attended Azusa Pacific University before working there for 26 years. After her time at Azusa Pacific, she moved to the other side of the country to serve as president of Roberts Wesleyan University in Rochester, New York. Just like SPU, Roberts is a private Christian liberal arts University with Free Methodist roots. 

Porterfield served as president of Roberts for nine years before being elected as the next president of SPU. New York to Washington is quite a move, so I was curious to learn about what led her to SPU. To put it simply, she believes she was destined to serve the SPU community. 

PORTERFIELD:

“..I feel like God called me to this time, and this season, have a real peace about that. And that’s why I’m here.” “ I’ve always admired Seattle Pacific for its ability to have the hard conversations, right, and to do that with excellence..” 

NEVAREZ: 

With the arrival of Dr. Porterfield comes a first for SPU. She is officially the university’s first female president, which was also the case when she became president of Roberts. This achievement brings much pride to SPU’s history. At the same time, Porterfield knows that being the first female president comes with the task of showing others what a female leader looks like. This is because many people haven’t seen a woman in her position before.

PORTERFIELD:

Women lead differently than men. There’s a lot of wonderful research on the strength of female leaders how they build teams and how they are able to bring communities together in different ways. And so, I think that’s part of what I bring…But at the same time, there’s going to be some re-shifting to understand what it means to have a female president. I’m gonna lead differently. 

NEVAREZ:

As of September 2023, Porterfield has been in office for about two months. One of the goals she has been working toward completing has to do with the many administration positions that have not been filled yet. 

PORTERFIELD: 

We have a lot of interim roles in the administration. So, I’ve been doing interviews and hiring, we have a number of open positions, we have some positions that were not refunded. And so, I’ve got to get creative and try to figure out how to bring some of those areas back into our administration that were cut from some of the budget cuts, right? That’s really important, right? So we want to make sure that we’re supporting everything…

NEVAREZ:

A long-term goal the President has involves the unity of the SPU community as a whole. Porterfield says that during a time when differing opinions can affect large communities, schools like SPU have the ability to bring people together to have mature conversations. As President, she wants to make sure these conversations continue to happen.

PORTERFIELD:

We’re being divided and polarized, and people are trying to push you as students and me even in my role to one side or another, and then asking us to advocate and fight each other. And what we bring that’s really unique is the ability to engage and sit around a table with difference where good people can differ on things. And that we can learn how to do that so that our graduates go out and bring communities together versus separate them.

NEVAREZ: 

With the new school year officially started, Porterfield is looking forward to building a stronger sense of unity at SPU. For the first quarter of the school year, she intends to get to know members of the community to the best of her ability. 

PORTERFIELD:

Being here, I have been here for almost two months. And in that short period of time, I’ve met some really wonderful people that are committed to this place. And I look forward to adding the students to that list of those that I get to know. And we’re going to work hard and we’re going to have to make some hard decisions. But we’re also going to make some decisions that are very exciting for this place and to lean into our mission and what it is that we are called to do. 

NEVAREZ: 

For The Falcon, I’m Antonio Nevarez.