OGDEN — Chris Mallett is just settling into his very first semester as Weber State University’s president.

However, the 14th president of WSU — and a 2001 graduate of WSU — wasn’t always looking to take part in higher education.

“When I started at Weber State, I was 22 and I was living in Ogden and building houses in Davis County,” he said. “That was my trade and profession and I was skiing and I had no plan for higher education.”

He said there was one person that helped send him down a non-traditional route into higher education.

“My wife’s also an alumna of the university and that’s a big part of my story — I saw through her experience as a working adult what a university could do,” he said. “As I was getting to know my wife for the first time in my life as an older person relative to the typical age of college-going people or any of my peers from high school, I got a sense of what a university could really mean and be for someone, and so as she was graduating, I decided to start.”

Mallett said his time at WSU would serve him well.

“Through Weber State, I had the chance for the first time in my life to kind of develop skills that served me well in my entire career,” he said. “It’s the first time I ever learned through coursework how to really respect and work with divergent viewpoints, for example.”

Following his time at Weber State, Mallett took on administrative positions at Western Governor’s University. After 13 years at WGU, Mallett took on positions at Northeastern University for 12 years, most recently serving as chief administrative officer at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute.

Then came a major opportunity for Mallett to return home.

“I’ve had a really successful career in higher education and been fortunate to be part of two exciting universities over almost 26 years,” he said. “But when the presidency of your alma mater opens in a community that really meant a lot to Charlotte and me, it was a kind of a calling that I really felt like I had to pursue, and I’m glad I did.”

He said that he’s arrived on campus at a time of great opportunity for WSU.

“The university has so much momentum,” he said. “It’s a university on the rise. … I think institutions like Weber State are in many ways the future of higher education, and I have lots of reasons for believing that.  The university is coming off a five-year strategic plan where we’ve met essentially and achieved all of our stretch goals for the most part. Record-breaking enrollment, strong pathways programs with our partners at Ogden and Davis Technical Colleges and great pipelines in K-12 with concurrent enrollment. None of that was true of the Weber State that I was a student at. So that’s all recent and sort of new momentum, at least at scale, and it gives us so much to work with in terms of success.”

Mallett also cited the Amplify campaign having raised 70% of its $200 million goal as another sign of WSU’s string of successes.

He said ground this solid for a new university president to land on is somewhat unusual.

“In terms of what’s next for Weber State, the exciting thing is there’s really nothing to fix,” he said. “Often in a presidency becoming available, a new president comes in for a reason. Here, that reason was transition, appropriately — a long-time beloved president, President (Brad) Mortensen had done such great things with the university and pursued a calling to his alma mater at Utah State. Here, it’s all about doubling down on the success that we’ve had, extending the excellence that Weber State’s already created.”

With a solid launch pad to go from, Mallett said he’s looking at putting his goals for building WSU’s momentum into place.

“The biggest opportunity is to double down on partnerships and experiential learning because that will change the game for our university and its future and for our students,” he said. “We’re doing it now. We can do more of it.”

He added that the biggest challenges lay within how fast education is evolving.

“Even if we do that really, really well, everything is moving so quickly,” he said. “Those partnerships are going to have to be really strong and durable and we’re gonna have to be really agile so that it’s not just design it now and it’s good for four years. We might need to be revisiting the curriculum annually to stay and keep current with the pace of change in the way that all businesses are.”

However, Mallett said he and the university are up to the challenge.

“Regional publics and our university are really well positioned to handle the expectations and shifting realities of American higher education and consumers,” he said. “And our mission compels us to kind of stay true to that and we’re really well positioned and excited.”