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Wendy Fritzen Hensel is a Harvard-educated lawyer, vice chancellor of one of the nation’s largest university systems who calls Hawaii her second home where she spends “frankly as much time as I possibly can” at a condo she owns on the Big Island.

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a Stanford-trained education leader and provost of a Midwestern university where he’s boosted enrollment. He’s a champion of diversity and a charter school critic who once authored a parodic proposal to create “Aquatica: The Great Lakes Underwater School.”

The University of Hawaii Board of Regents is scheduled to interview Hensel and Vasquez Heilig on Wednesday to determine which one will be the next president of the University of Hawaii. The public will be allowed to comment at the meeting, but the board may conduct its interviews behind closed doors.

A decision could come as soon as Thursday.

The candidates are much the same in some ways. Both attended college in Michigan. Both earned degrees from prestigious universities. And in lengthy presentations at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus, both highlighted their commitment to Native Hawaiian culture and values. Hensel noted the values of ohana, aloha and kakou (or unity). Vasquez Heilig went further, discussing kupuna, kuleana and aina, as well as aloha and ohana.

But Hensel and Vasquez Heilig have significantly different backgrounds, experience levels and demonstrated academic interests. 

Hensel: ‘Thoughtful, Concise, Reasoned And Articulate’

Hensel was exposed to high-stakes political battles early in her career. She attended Michigan State University and before law school at Harvard served as an intern to the assistant of then-U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, where Hensel’s resume says she “assisted with the .”

After Harvard, Hensel clerked for a federal judge in Atlanta and practiced employment compliance and litigation for the corporate law firm , and eventually went on to teach law at what she told the audience at UH she thought “would be a very short stop on my career path” at Georgia State College of Law. 

Ultimately she landed a tenure-track position and became a tenured professor, and focused on disability discrimination and employment law and policy. She later became law school dean and ultimately provost. 

Former colleagues describe Hensel as an inspiring leader. Nicole Parsons-Pollard, now Georgia State’s provost, says Hensel took a chance and hired her as associate provost for faculty affairs when Parsons-Pollard’s main experience had been at Virginia State University, a historically black university. 

Hensel mentored Parsons-Pollard, who succeeded Hensel as provost after Hensel stepped down when a new Georgia State president came on board.

“She is the sole reason I am provost today,” Parsons-Pollard said.

During her time at Georgia State, as Civil Beat reported last week, Hensel was accused of engaging in bias against a Black law professor. Hensel said in an interview last week that she had nothing to do with the law professor’s complaint, which was filed against the then-interim dean of the law school. 

Parsons-Pollard said Hensel had a proven record of working on diversity issues. Among other initiatives, Hensel set up “” to “to identify challenges and opportunities for addressing faculty inclusion and belonging,” she said.

Hensel is now provost of the City University of New York, one of the nation’s largest university systems. Like UH, CUNY is an  with high research activity. But CUNY is significantly larger than UH, with some . Hensel’s position as CUNY’s No. 2 – officially she’s vice chancellor and provost – pays  annually, considerably more than what UH president David Lassner makes. He earned $409,000 in 2024.

Hensel’s experience with industry on job training and economic development initiatives at CUNY includes working with the  to create training programs to “ensure a qualified and competitive local workforce,” she said in an email. 

At Georgia State, she worked with the Georgia Film Academy — a consortium of universities involved with film, television and digital entertainment job training — an area where Hawaii is poised for growth.  

She said health sciences could offer more opportunities.

“It would be interesting to explore a potential expansion of the biomedical sciences, a rapidly growing area with multiple economic implications,” she said in an email.

Hensel has also shown an ability to deal with elected officials, particularly those who have sought to interfere with academic freedom. For example, speaking at UH Manoa, she pointed to a time when Georgia lawmakers and the governor sought to target particular researchers teaching courses related to privilege, hierarchy or racial inequity. 

When lawmakers tried to identify such professors by asking for a list of courses focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, Hensel says she complied with the request by providing a list of course titles and numbers — but not professor names. The list was responsive to the lawmakers’ request while not exposing any particular professors, she said.

At the same time, she said, she would seek to build new relationships with the Hawaii Legislature, as well as industry and foundations.

“You have to forge relationships that can survive the challenges that anyone in this level of spotlight is going to encounter,” she said.

Hensel’s experience has impressed Virginia Hinshaw, the former chancellor of the University of Hawaii Manoa, who in testimony said Hensel is “the most capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of the UH President position.”

“She has highly relevant professional experience, including administrative leadership at a system level, dealing with a wide range of responsibilities (budget, student affairs, congressional interactions, etc.),” Hinshaw wrote in testimony submitted to the regents. 

“She has served in a range of positions within universities as well, so that insight would enable her to understand the needs of students, staff, and faculty,” Hinshaw said. “Her presentation and responses to questions were thoughtful, concise, reasoned, and articulate.” 

Still, there was at least one area where Hensel’s answers fell short. Despite saying she is connected to Hawaii and Native Hawaiian culture, Hensel couldn’t cite any Native Hawaiian scholars she had read.

“You’re asking me names to prove that I’ve done this, and I may fail on that,” she said. “But I guarantee I actually have read these books.”

In addition, she said, “I’ve actually watched a number of PBS specials about the history of Hawaii.”

Property records show she owns a vacation home at  on the Big Island.

Vasquez Heilig: ‘A Rising Star’

Vasquez Heilig also went to college in Michigan, in his case at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He then pursued studies in education and education policy. After earning his doctorate at Stanford, Vasquez Heilig went to the University of Texas, Austin, where he was a professor and held leadership positions that included serving as vice chair of the education college’s Graduate Studies Committee.

He spent five years at California State University’s College of Education in Sacramento, where he was a professor and director of the doctoral program in educational leadership. After that he spent four years as dean of the University of Kentucky in Lexington’s College of Education, Human Development and Sports Sciences. He took over as provost of Western Michigan University in 2023.  

Vasquez Heilig has made a name for himself as a leader in education, particularly in opening education opportunities to traditionally marginalized communities.

“Everybody will tell you he’s a rising star,” says Jamal Watson, executive editor of “,” which is featuring Vasquez Heilig in a cover story this month. “I would tell you he’s already a star.”

In his short tenure, Vasquez Heilig  at Western Michigan after a decade of year-over-year declines.

A noted strength is Vasquez Heilig’s demonstrated ability to reach outside the university to connect with community, says , president of the Hawaii chapter of the NAACP.

“I worked with him first when he was the Chair of the Education Committee for the California-Hawaii NAACP,” Braggs said in an email. “He was more than impactful in that he advanced educational initiatives, advocacy for minority and underrepresented populations, and led national efforts on behalf of the students in our state area conference.”

“Julian is very approachable and fosters an environment where students, staff, and community voices are heard,” he added.

Vasquez Heilig’s presentation at the University of Hawaii was deferential to Native Hawaiian culture and values, including statements about “valuing and protecting the aina and its cultural and spiritual significance,” “honoring both academic excellence and Indigenous knowledge” and “acknowledging the colonial history and resistance of this place.”

Vasquez Heilig’s view of the university as a catalyst for economic development focuses not on attracting new industries but rather on training students for jobs that can be done remotely from Hawaii, he said.

“What are those skill sets that make our graduates marketable anywhere in the world?” he said.

Vasquez Heilig has been a leading voice against the charter school trend, saying the schools undermine equity and fail to live up to their promises. 

A blog he formerly ran called “Cloaking Inequity” once published a  mocking charter school advocates by proposing an underwater school that would provide “the unparalleled opportunity to study aquatic life and ecosystems up close, turning Lake Michigan into a living classroom where lessons in biology, chemistry, and environmental science come alive.”

The post demonstrated what Vasquez Heilig said is his desire to bring a sense of humor to his work. But it also made a point.

“The foundational premise of charter schools was to foster innovation and provide an alternative that would spur improvements within the traditional public school system,” he told a  in March. “Yet, the body of peer reviewed academic research, including my own studies, increasingly questions the efficacy of charter schools in delivering on these promises.”

Still, Vasquez Heilig said he finds Hawaii’s charter schools “intriguing,” particularly the Hawaiian-focused charter schools.

“I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some dedicated Hawaiian charter educators involved in this work at an education conference,” he said in an email. “From what they told me, Hawaiian-focused charter schools play a crucial role in the resurgence of the Hawaiian language, seeking cultural preservation and academic achievement.”

The glaring question for Vasquez Heilig involves experience. Hensel has several years of high-level, system-wide administrative work at R1 universities. By contrast, despite more than a decade of leadership experience at top tier universities like UT-Austin and the University of Kentucky, Vasquez Heilig has been provost at Western Michigan, an R2 university, only since January 2023.

His salary at Western Michigan is , significantly less than Lassner and Hensel.

Vasquez Heilig dismissed concerns about a lack of experience, saying the administrative skills needed to run any university are the same. It’s simply a matter of scaling up.

“When you lean in,” he said, “all of these jobs are very similar to each other.”