Connie Millard Niva and Angela S. Cox were named by Governor Gary Locke this summer to Washington State University’s 10-member Board of Regents. Cox will serve as the student member, a position created in 1998.
Niva (’62 Bact. & Public Health) makes her home in Everett. She served on the Everett City Council, 1986-89, and on the Washington State Transportation Commission for 10 years, including three as chair.
As a regent, she says, she’d like to see WSU continue making progress in creating the best undergraduate experience and in nurturing a world class environment for research, scholarship, and graduate education. She also wants WSU to become a leader in academic excellence among its group of peer universities.
The major challenge for WSU’s leadership at the moment, she says, is to manage with a reduced state budget appropriation, while continuing to plan for long-term growth and the needs of the communities were WSU has campuses.
During her six-year term, Niva says she will work to gain recognition by the state legislature and citizens that funding for higher education is “a critical element in the future economic development and quality of life of the people of the state.”
Niva holds a master’s degree in public administration from Seattle University, where she has been a visiting professor. She also has been a lecturer and laboratory administrator at the University of Washington Medical School. Her husband is Jud Marquardt.
Angela Cox, a WSU senior from Anchorage, is a dual major in advertising and English. In addition to attending classes during the summer, she was an editorial assistant for the Western Journal of Black Studies, a leading interdisciplinary journal that publishes scholarly articles focusing primarily on the African American experience in the United States.
As a regent, Cox says she will concentrate her efforts on building relationships and diversity, as well as attending to the budget.
“This position is not about what it can do for me, but what I can do for the students,” she says. “I want to . . . be proactive with student issues . . . to be there with a plan to resolve any issue.”