Jacqueline Van Hoomissen has been appointed as the new dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at Gonzaga University, taking over the reins from interim dean, Matt Bahr. 

Van Hoomissen, 49, stepped into her new role in June, following a 22-year career at the University of Portland. During her career at the private Catholic school, Van Hoomissen concurrently served as a professor of biology, neuroscience, and the neurobiology of health behaviors and in several administrative roles, including associate dean for scholarship and creative engagement.

Van Hoomissen grew up in a small farming community 25 miles west of Portland, Oregon, that was founded by immigrants from Belgium and the Netherlands in the late 1800s. She attended the University of Portland as an undergrad and received her doctorate in exercise science with a concentration in neuroscience from the University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia. 

The Journal recently met with Van Hoomissen to discuss her new role, her passion for higher education, and what she hopes to accomplish. 

What attracted you to working in higher education? 

I grew up on the farm my great grandparents had founded when they came from Belgium, and although my family was land-rich and my parents had both gone to college, I didn’t think I would be able to go to college because we didn’t have the money. A friend suggested I apply to the University of Portland, and they gave me a Fulbright Scholarship and that’s how I got to go. 

Once I got to UP, the whole world opened up. It started with the university giving me money to go to college and then having amazing faculty that saw potential in people and saying, "Let me open this door for you." Because, you don’t know those doors if you don’t have somebody around you. That’s why I continue to go to higher education. It just felt like this is the place where students can come and discover their full potential.

What is it about Gonzaga University that draws you in?

The mission at Gonzaga is amazing to me because they have that focus on educating the whole person. There’s a Latin phrase in Jesuit education that is “cura personalis,” which means “care for the whole person.” I teach health, and I’ve taught bioscience and neuroscience and the neurobiology of health, and when you think about that phrase, if you’re going to care for a whole person, for a person to be fully who they choose to be, want to be, imagine to be, we have to support their growth in lots of different areas. 

At a mission-focused institution like UP or Gonzaga, that allows us to ask, for you to thrive, what do you need? And it goes beyond the content in the classroom. We get to have access to all the different ways that we can support a person in their growth, which I think is at odds right now in higher education in some places where laws are being passed to eliminate offices of diversity.

I have colleagues at institutions that have had to scrub the word diversity off of every website. And that’s part of students’ identities, to see themselves as unique individuals. That’s why in a private school like Gonzaga, you can look at things from a different perspective, weave them together, and have diverse conversations because it's rooted in cura personalis. 

Overall college enrollment has decreased in recent years. What is the benefit of a liberal arts education? 

It is a tension I wrestle with because so many of my family members will say it’s too expensive. What do you train them for? What are you going to do with that degree? That’s the number one question. It gives you the background to pull information together because you had experiences in the learning process. Imagine a big painting; the more learning you do, the more colors you add to your painting. In my world in education, everything is rooted in being able to see a really big, colorful picture of the world. 

What has been really transformative for liberal arts education lately has been the acceptance that our students in liberal arts are well rounded, and they can go into any field they want to because they’ve got all the tools. The employer research that comes out every year that asks what employers are looking for shows they are looking for all the skill sets that liberal arts grads have. Might they be missing the ability to code? Employers have said, yes, but (employers) can teach them that and train them in technical skill sets. That is one way the Spokane community can be a major partner for our liberal arts program. 

How so? 

One thing that we are trying to focus on is finding places that will take liberal arts grads on as summer interns. The research will show that if somebody does an internship, the probability that they get hired into a job that is in line with their major or interest is really high. 

Those internships have historically been part of the education for engineers, nurses, and accountants, but not so much for liberal arts. But where is an internship for history? Maybe an art museum or nonprofit needs help archiving. That’s an internship for students that teaches them project management, interpersonal communication, or data management. That is going to be one of my passions: thinking of how to connect our students and liberal arts with the local community to get those experiences, but also help employers see the value of undergraduate students as partners with their work. 

The reality is, we don’t know what work will look like in three years. So, if we only had education that trained you for a specific job, it could be obsolete in two or three years. So we have to train and educate them in the way of knowing how to think, how to be fully human, and set them up to be successful no matter what comes next. 

What other goals do you have? 

I’m also excited to get to know the school. The College of Arts and Science is a big part of Gonzaga. I love the diversity of their program and the possibilities they have. I think this year is going to be a year of all of us getting to know one another, and for me to understand the hopes and dreams of the faculty. I’m very excited to work with all the partners on campus—the medical school with the University of Washington and our health sciences and leadership. 

We are starting a new Institute for Informatics and Applied Technology. It’s going to be interesting as we talk about the ethical use of technology, who has been left behind by technology, and how are the policies at the state and (federal) levels going to be created, or not, around technology. These topics are in the news all the time now about artificial intelligence. 

We also have an institute on humanities, and I’m excited to see what kind of public engagement humanities projects will generate. We have a large incoming class of freshmen, which is exciting, and it means there will be a buzz on campus. 

 This interview has been edited for length and clarity.