Always Looking Forward

Since Stephen Percy first began working in an academic setting, his focus has been engagement, community and innovation. Colleagues point to his sense of humor and how natural leadership comes to him, while students recall Percy’s knack for patience while treating everyone as equals.

His journey is marked by these qualities, taking him on a path from the University of Virginia to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Baltimore before landing at Portland State University, where years of research and understanding culminated in an unexpected opportunity to serve as the university’s 10th president.

Percy is retiring from PSU in July 2023, after 39 years in higher education and more than three years as  Portland State’s president — most of which was spent navigating one of the most challenging periods in the institution’s history: a racial justice reckoning amidst a global pandemic that changed the world as we knew it. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Percy made equity and racial justice his top strategic priority for the university, calling on other white leaders like himself to educate themselves in order to create real change and work toward eliminating structural racism. Doing so, he said, would usher in success for all students while helping the university thrive by creating an environment for PSU’s community to feel safe and prosper. Percy’s ability to prioritize racial justice, student success and community engagement strengthened PSU’s role as the state’s urban research university at this crucial and challenging point in time. As President Percy’s time at Portland State comes to a close, join us in reflecting on his career as an educator, administrator and innovator.

New beginnings

Percy grew up in Northern New York and began his academic career at the University of Virginia. He transitioned to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — the furthest West he'd ever traveled before coming to Portland — in 1989 when he was hired as Chair of the Department of Political Science. By 1992, he was appointed Director of the university’s Center for Urban Initiatives and Research — a position that not only allowed for community engagement and outreach, but gave Percy his first look at Portland State.

“We worked with foundations, nonprofits, civic groups as a partner in so many different initiatives, and we were trying to look for a really powerful vision for university-community engagement,” Percy said. “Portland State was the rockstar, they were the gold standard. And it was really doing that work that I developed my passion for university-community engagement and how wonderful it was to take our knowledge, training and expertise and combine it with the knowledge of our communities to solve problems.”

ERIC NOLL (‘15)

Despite all of the turbulence over the last few years, he still shows up and he’s really interested in what the people around him think.

Working at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sparked Percy’s journey to PSU in another way through his friendship with Sona Andrews, former PSU Provost. Andrews and Percy started at UWM together in 1992, quickly becoming friends as well as colleagues. As colleagues, they worked together on strategic planning for the university, designing pathways to connect the university with the city and conceptualizing what it meant for UVM to be an urban institution.

“It gave him the experience of knowing what it takes and how important it is for an institution to be seen as an urban serving institution, and really connect with the city,” Andrews said.

Years later, in 2012, Andrews joined Portland State as Provost and was tasked with hiring a new Dean for the College of Urban and Public Affairs.

“I always used to say as Provost when you hire a dean it's like opening up a safe deposit box. You have a key and the faculty have a key, and they both need to turn right to make the hire, because you can't hire someone the faculty don't want,” she said. “Steve was their first choice, and my first choice, which was wonderful.”  

The rest, as Percy has said, is history.

A journey West

“I was intrigued to come to PSU because of the university engagement, but I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest,” Percy said. Portland State gave him the chance to venture past Wisconsin and into the unknown.

Percy officially started at Portland State in 2014, and quickly got to work collaborating with the other deans and developing programs to help PSU serve the city.

“What we were trying to do at the time was a lot more collaboration between schools and colleges at Portland State — and Steve was just great at working with the other deans,” Andrews said. “We used to call it the Dean Dream Team. Steve was a big part of that. His personality is one of getting along with other people and bringing groups of people together.”

RAYLEEN MCMILLAN (‘15)

Even in my earliest meetings with Steve, I noted a sharp, attentive listener and a reliable, effective collaborator.

Students recall the same sense of collaboration and outreach from Percy’s tenure as dean.

“Right away on Steve's arrival as our new dean of CUPA, his commitment to PSU was clear,” said Rayleen McMillan (‘15). “Even in my earliest meetings with him, I noted a sharp, attentive listener and a reliable, effective collaborator.”

McMillian worked with Percy on the strategic planning development team while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2015.

“I learned a great deal about leadership watching his mindful navigation of power in this yearlong space, wherein dozens of educated and inspired leaders were arguing passionately over our university's core vision and values,” she said.

Eric Noll (‘15) remarked on Percy’s commitment to patience and the value placed on listening to everyone in the room, while working alongside McMillian on the strategic plan as students.

“He’s genuinely interested in what you have to say and then engages us in a dialogue to stretch the thinking and ensure that our opinions are added value to the conversation, the dialogue, the academic work, the policy, whatever the platform was,” said Noll, who recently rejoined the PSU community as a project manager in the Office of University Relations. “Whether we were working in an academic sense or student advocacy sense, he was generally interested in what I and my colleagues had to say. And I've seen that even in the last two months being back here, despite all of the turbulence over the last few years, he still shows up and he's really interested in what the people around him think and he wants to genuinely engage with folks.”

Percy’s years as dean led to the development of a new undergraduate degree — Urban and Public Affairs — as well as an interdisciplinary master’s in Emergency Management and Community Resiliency. The university’s strategic plan also developed in a way that not many institutions pursued by considering the plan through an equity lens. Andrews recalled that during the development process, they received feedback that the plan needed to be approached from a place of equity.

“We were really one of the first institutions to do that,” she said. “I think it's also what instilled Steve with that real desire when he became president to continue that equity work in a big way, which is one of the things I think that he's leaving as a legacy at PSU.”

Called to duty

In May 2019, PSU was thrust into a state of uncertainty when former President Rahmat Shoureshi resigned. Percy was named interim president by the Board of Trustees because of his reputation as a consensus-builder with a commitment to student success and diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I had the opportunity as dean to play some level of responsibility on campus,” he said. “But I was not intending to be a president.”

Sy Adler, former interim CUPA dean, said he wasn’t surprised when Percy was tapped to lead the university.

“He senses there's a hunger for the university to play a larger role in relation to what's happening, both In the city and the region,” Adler said. “Steve excels at playing a leadership and facilitation role to enable those things to occur.”  

Portland State was the rockstar, they were the gold standard. And it was really doing that work that I developed my passion for university community engagement.

As interim president, Percy's first priority was helping the university heal following the abrupt departure of Shoureshi, but he didn't get far in that process before the world came to a halt in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There was a lot of mending to do. We tried to get some strategic thinking going and then we got right into COVID,” Percy said. “The usual was unusual because there was no routine. Everything you did by normal processes, you had to stop and figure out how to respond.”  

Adler pointed to Percy’s ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, especially at such a pivotal moment. “Steve articulated early on the centrality of racial equity and justice issues as a major pillar of his presidency, which has been critically important,” he said. “The discourse has changed as it needed to.”

In 2020, Percy and Vice President for Global Diversity and Inclusion Ame Lambert  launched Time to Act, a three-year plan for racial justice and equity at PSU, as well as the Racial Equity Fund which invested $2.5 million into research and practices designed to bring forth racial equity.

“Portland State University will be a place where all students have the opportunity to succeed and where students and employees feel safe, feel a sense of belonging, and prosper — no matter their background,” Percy said when announcing Time to Act.

Lambert, who joined PSU early in Percy’s tenure as president, said she deeply honors his actions in racial justice and equity work.

“In 2020, Institutions across the country, indeed, across the globe, had to respond to the moment. Very few of them made racial justice their highest priority and fewer still followed up with concrete financial commitments. President Percy did,” Lambert said. “If you can tell what a person values and prioritizes by how they spend their funds and what they talk about, then it’s clear the president values this work. And the institution is a better place for that.”

Lambert added that she thinks it’s important to recognize that Percy committed to this work when he wasn’t required to do so.

“From the Diversity Action Council to the climate survey to his community engagement work, justice has always been important to the president. And when he had the opportunity to use his position to advance the work, he did,” she said. “Everyone who comes after would be hard-pressed to de-prioritize the work, especially in light of our demographics. I am grateful that this was a factor in the selection of President-Elect Ann Cudd. That is his legacy.”

The board voted unanimously in May 2020 to install Percy as the university’s permanent president.

"This is a time of opportunity that we must embrace," Percy said after the board's vote. "We must identify and take strategic actions consistent with our mission and values to strengthen PSU in an era of great change in higher education."

Since permanently stepping into the leadership role, Percy led several impactful and challenging initiatives. In addition to Time to Act and a focus on racial justice, he formed the Reimagine Campus Safety committee tasked with developing strategies and methods that work to end anti-Black outcomes in approaches to community safety. Focusing on climate impacts also stood out to Percy, leading to the creation of the Imperative for Climate Action in November 2021. He also oversaw the conclusion of a seven-year, $300 million fundraising effort known as Let Knowledge Serve: the Campaign for PSU, which funded student scholarships, new campus facilities and the creation of 34 new named faculty positions.

Percy attributes his ability to be successful as president to his ongoing work to be an empathetic listener.

“Empathetic means trying to put yourself in their position or listen to the lens that isn’t your own personal lens,” he said. “It's ‘What are they thinking about? What do they care about? What are the issues there?’ Because if you do that, I find you can understand the issues behind things more deeply.”

Future minded

As Percy wraps up the final months of his tenure — which includes a return to the classroom leading the Dean’s Seminar for the Urban and Public Affairs degree — his focus is on the future.

“The pandemic, economic impact and racial injustice have all led to people looking for new solutions and new ways of doing things,” he said. “I think it's a tremendous opportunity for urban universities like PSU. We care and we're not going anywhere.”

He hopes Portland State continues its engagement work with the community, and serves as a leader in finding solutions that impact daily life.

“Portland's been a leader before,” he said. “So can we be a leader again?”

While Percy takes some time to tend to his garden and travel, he’s already planning his next project focused on community engagement.  

“What can we do to deepen it even further?”

Key achievements