OREM — The new president of Utah Valley State College spent most of his first day on the job taking care of the regular humdrum tasks such as unpacking, securing a parking pass and signing up for health and dental insurance.
William Sederburg also spent part of Monday wandering the halls of the administration building, shaking hands.
"Hi, I'm Bill Sederburg, the new guy on the block," he said to Lilas Park, who both works at and attends UVSC.
When Park said she was from Pleasant Grove, Sederburg asked the right question for an outsider who needs to fit in quickly at a new school in a new state.
"Pleasant Grove?" Sederburg asked. "That's where the 'G' on the mountain is, right?"
Little else about Sederburg's new job will be as simple as breaking the code of those letters painted on the mountains above the valley served by his rapidly expanding school.
He will need every bit of political savvy he can muster as he tries to chart a course for UVSC that is acceptable to state officials facing a budget crisis but also meets the needs of a community in the throes of phenomenal growth.
He faces critical questions about UVSC's long-term direction — should it become a university? — and how to pay for it.
Sederburg's background appears to fit the chore. He has a Ph.D. in political science and spent the past nine years working within Michigan's system of higher education as president of Ferris State University. He's also an affable, personable man at noticeable ease with everyone from politicians to secretaries.
But Ferris State has 11,000 students. UVSC grew by exactly half that number in just the past five years, to more than 23,000 last fall. With money tight in the state, Sederburg's first day included plenty of discussion about Utah's Board of Regents, which last week affirmed a five-year moratorium on adding degrees at UVSC.
"We'll live with it, and we'll prosper," Sederburg said.
"UVSC is a school in transition," said Sederburg, who predicted after he was hired in December that the college would become a university.
"It's not a mature college or university, or even community college, any more. It's in transition. We need to identify the direction we're moving and get people to buy into that. That's what excited me about this job. It's a school that's been very successful, and we want to get people to join us in a crusade to make us even better."
He'll have to address tuition, which jumped 19 percent last year and will be an additional 12 percent higher this coming year. UVSC students already pay 48 percent of the cost of their education — state tax dollars fund the rest — by far the highest rate in Utah, said Brad Cook, UVSC vice president for academic affairs.
Will UVSC students continue to have to shoulder more of the tuition load than students at other state schools?
"My first day, I don't have the answers to all of these questions," Sederburg said. "Those are the issues we face, and I have some ideas, but before I jump into some of these issues I need to understand the school, the students here and the culture of the state."
That education begins immediately. Now that he and his wife, Joyce, and their cat, Hobbes, have settled into the president's quarters and he has a computer password, he's ready to address the Provo-Orem Chamber of Commerce on Friday.
A week from today he'll meet with the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and tour church headquarters and Temple Square.
"It probably takes two or three years before you really understand a school," Sederburg said. "And here there are a lot of cultural differences and stylistic differences."
Sederburg, a Lutheran with a yen for genealogy, is determined to fit in. He even has a Web site, www.sederburg.com, devoted to his family line, and he can't wait to check out a Sederburg grave site in the Provo City Cemetery. The Web site needs an update, though. It still lists him as president of Ferris State.
Sederburg won't wait to learn everything about UVSC before he starts lobbying on the college's behalf with legislators and regents, who can probably expect the same opening line.
"Hi, I'm Bill Sederburg, the new guy on the block."
E-MAIL: twalch@desnews.com