Dr. Patsy Lipira has had many roles in her 31 years at Missouri Southern, but she will now assume a new role as the Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs.

“I got offered the Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs, I think, mainly because I have been here for a long time,” Lipira said. “I had served as faculty, department chair, which is kind of administrative, been on a lot of committees, had a lot of relationships on campus.”

After receiving an undergraduate degree in teaching physical education and math from Northwest Missouri State University and a master’s from Kansas State University, Lipira applied to Southern in 1981 and became head softball and volleyball coach, intramural director as well as a half-time teacher. In 2000, she gave up coaching and became the department chair of kinesiology.

“Personally, I felt like my decision came down to the thought that maybe this is the right thing to do, maybe I’m the person that can bridge the faculty and administration,” Lipira said.

According to Lipira, she felt that there had been “a lot of splintering” amongst faculty, staff, administration and students. She hopes to improve communication and trust between faculty and administration, which she feels as been lacking in recent years.  

“I feel like there wasn’t a lot of trust in our administration, and I want the faculty to trust me and that I am going to go to bat for them,” Lipira said. “I am going to try to make decisions that are best for them.”

However, improving relationships on campus is not her only goal. She has created a department chair manual and hopes to increase dual credit opportunities in local high schools.

Lipira is also going to continue program prioritization. All programs, academic and nonacademic, will be examined for ways to manage costs and better serve students.  

“It’s really going to look at what are some of our areas that are high demand, low cost, those are great,” she said. “But some of the areas that have very low demand and very high cost, we really have to look at those and say ‘We only have a certain amount of resources, so where do we want to put those resources?’ That’s going to be a tough job.”

Lipira says she is aware that as vice president of academic affairs, which will have a two-year interim label, she is in a position that could be criticized, but hopes she will have the support of everyone on campus.

“In this position, I feel it’s so much like coaching,” she said.

“I give the analogy that, when I made decisions as a coach, it’s because I wanted to win, so why would a player question that? I don’t want to lose. It’s the same thing here, I’m going to make decisions that I think are best for Missouri Southern. Why would I make a decision that’s not good for Missouri Southern?

“We all want Missouri Southern to be a great place. To me Missouri Southern can be a great place to work and a great place to go to school. That should be the goal of all of us.”