Mike Leavitt

He later served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush.

As governor in the mid-1990s, Leavitt faced projected enrollment growth that traditional campus expansion could not affordably meet, especially in a large, sparsely populated state. At a 1995 meeting of the Western Governors’ Association he advanced the idea of a regional, technology-enabled university that would measure learning rather than seat time. Together with Colorado Governor Roy Romer and other western governors, he secured initial commitments of $100,000 from each participating state. Western Governors University was incorporated in 1997 as a private nonprofit and launched its first degree programs in 1999.

Leavitt has described the goal as creating an alternative pathway for populations not well served by existing institutions, using the internet and a competency-based model. WGU’s College of Health Professions was later renamed the Michael O. Leavitt School of Health in recognition of his role. He has remained associated with the university’s founding narrative and has received lifetime achievement recognition for the effort.

Leavitt’s political leadership turned a governors’ discussion into a functioning, regionally accredited, fully online competency-based university that now enrolls well over 100,000 students. The project showed that state executives could create a new institutional model outside traditional public university systems.