From Rome to D.C. to New York City, Gonzaga president Katia Passerini lands in Spokane with high hopes for school’s future amid higher ed challenges

Standing in a huddle of students at a recent orientation event, Gonzaga University’s next president anticipated the arrival of her Kawasaki Z400 from New York.

Katia Passerini is already planning a trip up Mount Spokane on her motorcycle this summer. In a few months, she’ll bring up her skis.

“Is it true they open up the slopes at night?” Passerini asked the students, adding night skiing to her growing list of Spokane activities.

A mountain within an hour’s drive of downtown is one of the many Spokane-specific quirks Passerini didn’t know she was missing while in New York City, where she lived for years before starting her role as GU’s 27th president in July.

“I mean, it’s different from New York City,” she told the students. “It’s just so warm and welcoming.”

Passerini is the first woman hired to be the university’s president. She follows the 16-year tenure of Thayne McCulloh, and while she doesn’t inherit a school struggling with financial strife or looming scandals, she doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the less-than-ideal environment present now in higher education.

There are demographic cliffs as fewer young adults pursue a degree; pauses or cuts to federal research grants; campus protests and unrest; and the targeted efforts to derail diversity, equity and inclusion.

“There are some that I have no decision-making slack on, just because we have to jump on it very quickly,” Passerini said. “Like what is happening in Washington (D.C.) in terms of funding; we have to see what the impact is for us and react quickly.”

Passerini’s extensive resume includes international education, roles as a professor, a special interest in managing information systems and artificial intelligence, work in business consulting and most recently five years in school leadership at New Jersey’s Seton Hall University, all accomplishments she believes will serve her well in responding to the next wave of higher education challenges. Gonzaga’s Board of Trustees and a presidential search committee unanimously selected her for the role from amid nearly 100 applicants.

Michael Reilly, chair of Gonzaga’s board of trustees, is sure Passerini is the right person at the helm .

“She is a powerful combination of intellect, compassion and strategic vision,” Reilly said. “She’s a very engaged listener. She approaches conversations with genuine interest. She has a very keen sense of humor.”

A well-stamped passport

Born and raised in Rome, Passerini did her share of globe-trotting before settling in the Lilac City.

Her parents were elementary school teachers who became superintendents, instilling in her the value of education. She spent her childhood in Italy, got her first scooter at age 15 and eventually graduated to a motorcycle.

Scooting through Italy’s capital and earning undergraduate degrees in political science and economics, she didn’t consider the United States until graduate school.

“I did not consciously make the decision to leave,” she said of her home country. “Initially, I was supposed to come for a year to do an exchange study abroad program from Italy to the U.S. Then it was really fun.”

A year’s stay at school in Washington D.C. turned into pursuing her MBA, then enrolling in a doctorate program with fellowships and a Fulbright Scholarship. It was there she met her husband, Arturo Pagan, in a summer course that took a small group of students across the Caribbean to study ecotourism. She’s still connected with her professor, Mary Granger, who was the only woman in the information systems and computer science department at George Washington University.

“She was a rock star … She encouraged me to do an internship; so I did an internship at the Library of Congress …” Passerini said. “She kind of took me under wing. For me, it was like role-modeling.”

On one return to Italy during her Ph.D. program, Passerini’s parents knew she wouldn’t return for a life in Italy before she realized it herself.

“I told them, ‘OK, it’s another three years,’ ” she said of her Ph.D. program. “Then I went back home and they met Arturo, and they said, ‘OK, she’s not coming back.’ ”

Pagan still lives in Brooklyn, where he works in human resources for the United Nations. He plans to visit Passerini and work remotely in Spokane. The two raised three sons together: Luis, Michelangelo and Diego, the youngest who is gearing up for school at Gonzaga Prep.

She’s settling into her first weeks in the relatively small city of Spokane, still brandishing evidence of her more metropolitan stops along the way. New York City instilled in her a love of public transportation, and now she rides Spokane’s City Line bus to and from her downtown apartment to work each day. International outreach remains a priority for her in university leadership, having learned the value in her own education. She’s adorned with tokens hinting at her Roman upbringing: a distinct Italian accent, a rose gold St. Peter’s Basilica charm around her wrist and a ring shaped like the Roman Colosseum that hugged her finger during a recent interview with The Spokesman-Review.

‘Gonzaga’s gain…’

Passerini assumes the presidency during a stormy time in higher education. The Trump administration has withdrawn tens of millions of dollars in federal grants that Gonzaga was expecting, including about $20 million for the Gonzaga Institute for Climate, Water and the Environment awarded last July from the Environmental Protection Agency, and $48 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce for an Airway Heights aerospace tech hub involving a consortium of 50 companies, government agencies and academic institutions, Gonzaga included.

The school planned to develop educational programs to align with expected professional offerings at the tech hub, McCulloh said at the time.

Passerini is supportive of the partnership, citing the economic benefits to the region and to her students who may learn and work at the facility, but said the school’s involvement may need another look depending on funding realities. She’s hopeful that the consortium can secure the funding again by reapplying for the grant.

“What we might need to refine is what level of participation, or what level of commitment, will universities that don’t have those resources created by business profits,” Passerini said.

Gonzaga hasn’t shied from existing efforts surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion despite the federal government taking aim at anything that smells of DEI. Passerini said these efforts align with the school’s mission as a Jesuit institution that prioritizes common good and uplifting people in the face of injustice.

“I think it’s very important for us to continue to serve all the students that we have served in the past,” Passerini said. “So it might be that some of those initiatives will have to be more funded by some of our resources.”

In the resource “juggle” that Passerini expects, she said she’ll consider which initiatives benefit the largest group of people possible.

Gonzaga isn’t exempt from a national trend of fewer young people pursuing a degree. While admission numbers aren’t yet finalized, Gonzaga anticipates “a slightly smaller first-year class this year than in the recent past,” according to a statement provided by the university.

The Gonzaga Bulletin student newspaper reported enrollment for this year’s freshman class at 1,150 students, the first class below 1,200 since 2020.

Passerini said boosting outreach to attract international students to GU and send students abroad could draw more to enroll.

“My hope is that we’ll have our students be able to travel themselves to other countries,” Passerini said.

It may be an uphill battle as the Trump administration revoked student visas and paused applications amid other changes to the visa process that may make it harder for international students to come to the U.S.

When she encountered visa woes at Seton Hall, Passerini said she worked directly with the people affected to “first take care of the students.”

“We met with the faculty and the students who were on visas to make sure that we would let them know that we were going to support them in whichever way,” Passerini said. “In some cases, if a faculty was on a temporary visa, we might have fast-tracked an application for a green card.”

Though she didn’t share specifics before consulting faculty, Passerini said she’d be interested in expanding Gonzaga’s research portfolio, though “there are pros and cons to that,” she said.

“For doing more research, what happens to the other things that we do?” Passerini said. “Ideally, I have a set of ideas that I would like to test with the community, but I don’t want to make a grandiose declaration without understanding how ready the community is to move forward.”

‘…Is Seton Hall’s loss’

Passerini spent five years in university leadership at Seton Hall University, a Catholic institution in New Jersey. It enrolls 1,000 more students than GU and nearly double the number of graduate students.

Also a school with a Division I athletic program, Reilly said its similarities were part of why Passerini could handle the Zags.

“And she understands the mission really well,” Reilly said. “I thought she was probably one of the best to articulate what our mission is and focus on that.”

Her resume departing Seton Hall includes an emphasis on interdisciplinary research and international outreach, boosting faculty salaries and consolidating colleges to save money.

Under a controversial 2021 restructuring plan, the school combined three existing colleges: education, communication arts and human development into the college of human development, culture and media.

Last year, under her leadership, Seton Hall faculty were given a salary raise of 2.5%, shy of the inflation rate of 3.6% in the first half of the year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A 2025 survey by the school’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors union, found that three-quarters of the 170 respondents were dissatisfied with the salary increase.

Mark Holtzman, vice chair of the executive committee in Seton Hall’s faculty senate, described Passerini as energetic, an innovator and a strategist.

“I think Gonzaga’s gain is our loss,” Holtzman said. “She’s very hardworking and energetic, and I’m very excited for her to have this opportunity.”

Editor’s note: This story has been changed to correct Michael Reilly’s position as the chair of the Board of Trustees.