Photo by Derek Redd WVU President E. Gordon Gee addresses the crowd at an alumni event Monday at Oglebay Park’s Crispin Center.

WHEELING — This 2024-25 school year will mark E. Gordon Gee’s final year as president at West Virginia University. But he doesn’t want to call this year a farewell tour. He isn’t planning on saying goodbye.

“I really don’t think about next,” he said Monday at Oglebay Park’s Crispin Center. “I think about now. I don’t consider it a farewell tour. I’m going to live in West Virginia. I’m going to remain very active in the life of West Virginia. I’ll be back and around.”

Gee was at Oglebay on Monday as part of a tour of the state that included a stop this past Saturday in Boone County and will continue Wednesday in Summersville. While in Ohio County, Gee spent the evening at the Crispin Center touting the successes of WVU and talking to locals about the successes in the Northern Panhandle. Members of the Wheeling Park High School Iron Patriots robotics team were at the event showing off some of their creations.

Robotics engineering is one of the newest majors WVU will offer beginning this fall. That move is part of the university’s “academic transformation,” which has led to the creation of some majors and the end of others, accelerated by a $45 million budget shortfall that led Gee to announce that significant changes needed made quickly. As a result, WVU cut nearly 30 majors and hundreds of faculty positions.

That led to a tumultuous period at WVU, one in which he saw the university faculty give him a vote of no confidence in 2023. Yet, through that controversy and upheaval, Gee said WVU is where it needs to be to be prepared for the future.

“I think that any change is very difficult,” he said. “Changing a university is sort of like moving a graveyard. It’s not very easy. And obviously what we did is we just attacked it.

“Most times at universities, you do things in a very opaque way,” he continued. “And I said, look, I don’t have much time here. I see that we’re in an existential crisis for higher education. Our financial issues are profound. We had the demographic cliff. The American university has lost the trust of the American people. So I really think that it was important for us to do exactly what we did.”

Gee said that three things were necessary in that transformation. Things needed to be done transparently and quickly in a data-driven manner. WVU’s donors showed their appreciation of that with a record-breaking fundraising year for the WVU Foundation — $282.6 million in total, with a record $30.4 million raised in this past year’s WVU Day of Giving.

Gee credits the people of the Mountain State for that overwhelming support.

“West Virginians love West Virginia University, and West Virginia University loves West Virginians,” he said. “Second of all, I think that outside is a bubble of an academic institution. People know that change needed to be made. And I got this time and time and time again, from alumni and friends. They said, oh my gosh, you know, I know it’s hard, but we need to make changes in order to be the kind of institution we need to be.”

When Gee came to WVU in 2014 for his second stint as president, the first one coming in 1981-85, he wanted to focus on four things. He wanted to focus on education, healthcare, prosperity and creating jobs, and making sure WVU students and West Virginians felt a purpose to stay in the state and succeed. On top of the educational changes, WVU Medicine has grown into the state’s largest health system with hospitals across West Virginia. Companies like Form Energy and LG are being attracted to the state to set up shop.

And while Gee’s tenure as WVU president is coming to an end, he has no plans on coasting into the finish. He wants to sprint through the tape.

“I want to go out and tell our story to West Virginians,” he said. “We’ve been through a change process. Now I want people to know exactly what we’ve done and why we’re doing it.

“I hope this next year will be one filled with joy and opportunity for so many, because I think this is a real time for the university to grow and flourish,” he continued, “and I want to be a part of that. I also want to make sure that when I leave, I leave having worked to the very last day.”