Westmont Magazine Veteran Vice President to Lead Student Life
Edee Schulze arrives with significant experience directing student life programs at Christian colleges.
Edee Schulze arrives on campus in July as the new vice president for student life. The finalist in a year-long, national search, she served as vice president of student life at Bethel University in Minnesota for the last six years. She replaces Jane Higa, who retired in 2013 after being diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Longtime administrator Tim Wilson stepped in as interim vice president and dean of students for a year.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Schulze, who will help us strengthen our mission of cultivating character and equipping great minds to be the next generation of global leaders,” says President Gayle D. Beebe. “She will continue the effective collaboration that occurs between our academic and co-curricular programs.”
“Westmont is singularly focused on being the best Christian, residential, undergraduate, global, liberal arts college in the country,” Schulze says. “This is a place where my gifts will be best applied and used.”
She discovered the strength of the Christian liberal arts when she worked at Wheaton College in Illinois. “It was phenomenal the way education was changing the lives of 18- to 22-year-olds,” she says. “It was transform-ing their perspectives and empowering them to use their God-given gifts and maximizing their intellectual capacity for Kingdom work.”
At Bethel, Schulze oversaw every-thing related to students’ experiences outside the classroom, from athletics to residence life to student activities.
During her 21 years at Wheaton, she held a variety of positions, includ-ing dean of student life. She graduated from California State Polytechnic University before earning a master’s degree at Wheaton and a doctorate from Loyola University Chicago. Schulze, who was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, looks forward to returning to California. “There is something about the West that’s in my native DNA,” she says.