To say that Susan Hopp is excited about being Linfield’s new vice president of student affairs and athletics/dean of students is an understatement: She’s only been a Wildcat since July, but she already describes her new role as the “best student affairs job in Oregon.”
The former dean of students at Pennsylvania’s Bucknell University got a call from an Oregonian colleague, who alerted her of the opening at Linfield. Hopp knew of the school’s reputation; she’d heard great things about the campus during careers at Western Oregon, Oregon State and Portland State universities. She even knew former dean Dave Hansen, professor of economics, and Jeff Mackay, associate dean of students and director of Residence Life.
But it wasn’t just rumors and professional associations that drew her to the campus. She said she liked the idea of managing both athletics and student affairs and the prospect of nurturing Linfield’s student experience as the college develops its vision within its new brand.
“I like to be a builder. I’m not a maintainer,” Hopp said. “I just think you take the best of what has already been created and you sort of move into the next phase.”
The search
The Vice President for Student Affairs and Athletics/Dean of Students Search Committee started meeting in January to hunt for a new dean.
Senior Colin Jones, Associated Students of Linfield College president and a member of the committee last year, said Hopp stood out as one of the top candidates.
“You really saw that she knew what she was talking about, and she could articulate a lot of the really complex issues around student services really well,” Jones said.
Examples of these key issues included the possible tensions between athletics and academics and an eagerness to interact with students, Jones said.
After the first round of interviews, the committee, comprising three faculty members, two student services administrators and two students, was charged with whittling those applicants down to three.
Hopp, along with Xavier Romano, dean of students for Knox College in Illinois, and Glenn Smith, vice provost for student services and enrollment management at Concordia University in Portland, visited Linfield in May for an intensive interview process.
Hopp and Smith emerged as the primary competitors after grillings by students, faculty and the search committee.
“Xavier, he brought with him a degree of controversy which we were not looking for,” Jones said.
The controversy involved a student forum at Knox in March that questioned how college authorities handled sexual assaults on campus.
According to The Knox Student, the independent, student-run paper of Knox College, “Main concerns about how the administration deals with sexual assault include … whether there are sufficient consequences for those who commit sexual assault, whether having the same person [Romano] be a Greek advisor and the Dean of Students presents a conflict of interest and whether there are enough services provided by the college to aid sexual assault victims,” (“Candidates for dean to visit in May,” TLR, April 30).
But Hopp’s expansive career in student affairs put her on top.
“Susan brought a breadth of experience at a number of institutions,” Jones said.
Smith’s experience, while impressive, stemmed almost exclusively from Concordia, Jones said.
Vast experience
Hopp brings to Linfield more than 30 years of experience in higher education administration.
After graduating with a master’s in student affairs from Indiana University Bloomington, Hopp was hired as associate dean of students and director of housing at Eckerd College in Florida. She soon traveled west, working at Western Oregon University as director of residence life and then at Lewis & Clark College as assistant vice president and director of campus life.
An opportunity for assistant vice provost opened up at Portland State University, and Hopp leapt on the chance to work at a large institution.
“I really learned a lot about curricular innovation, collaboration – sort of thinking about the student experience holistically,” Hopp said about her stint at PSU. “But I didn’t get to know students in the same way because it was so huge, and I was so removed from them.”
Hopp eventually took the reigns as director of student services and academic support programs at Oregon State University when a joke among friends became reality.
“We sort of had this longstanding joke about, ‘Well if they ever start a campus in Bend, we should all get our best friends together and go work there,’” she said.
Hopp helped build the OSU Cascades Campus in Bend, all the while gathering skills that may help her at Linfield.
“We couldn’t even cash a student’s check the first day,” she said. “I was the registrar on Monday, student life on Tuesday, admissions on Thursday, academic planning on Friday. It was that kind of really fast-paced, fun environment.”
But when the state of Oregon tightened its purse strings on public education system, Hopp moved on, this time moving east to Pennsylvania.
“One of the things we were learning through all of our assessment projects at Bucknell was that students were having this incredible experience, but they weren’t attributing their experience to being at Bucknell,” she said. “And the same can be said of Linfield students or Lewis & Clark students, so something was missing.”
To solve this problem, Hopp helped develop five key areas for student affairs to focus on: health and wellness, values and ethics, global citizenship, environmental sustainability and community leadership.
“These domains were areas that we thought, in student affairs, that we could contribute [to] in the greatest way,” she said.
Before Hopp could see the fruits of her labor, though, she came to Linfield, leaving the same year as the Bucknell president who hired her.
“This is the year that things were going to happen, and that’s why it was hard to leave,” she said. “I wouldn’t have left if it hadn’t been for this job [at Linfield].”
The student experience
Hopp said she hopes to develop positive student experiences at Linfield.
“One of the things I thought would be transferable [from Bucknell] is the way we developed student learning outcomes and organized everything we were doing around creating the best possible educational experience for students,” she said.
Hopp said part of this requires transforming students into superior professionals and community members.
Working at the OSU Cascades Campus gave Hopp insights about handling student experiences on multiple campuses. She said this will help to make “students feel like they’re part of the bigger picture” on both the Linfield’s McMinnville and Portland campuses.
Hopp said she will spend much of Fall Semester meeting with administrators and faculty to get input on how to implement her goals.
But she wants to hear from students, too.
“I want students to ask me questions like, ‘Well, how did this stupid policy get approved?’,” Hopp said.
She said she will have open office hours for students to come and discuss topics on anything from food services to student government to judicial issues.
Hansen’s ‘big shoes’
As Hopp settles into a routine at Linfield, many people may be wondering how she’ll handle the vacancy left by Dave Hansen, who stepped down as dean last year after a 22-year tenure in the position.
“I have known Susan Hopp for quite some time and look forward to her being at Linfield,” Hansen said in an e-mail. “She comes with a wealth of experience, energy and ideas for enhancing the student experience.”
While no one can doubt Hopp has big shoes to fill, Jones said he isn’t worried. In fact, he said Hopp’s energy and ideas will provide a welcomed new perspective on student affairs at Linfield.
“I think we’ll see that it’s not much that she’s going to fill Hansen’s shoes,” Jones said. “She brought her own shoes.”

Kelley Hungerford/Editor-in-chief
Kelley Hungerford can be reached at [email protected].