Sabah Randhawa

Sabah U. Randhawa is a Pakistani American engineer who serves as an academic administrator,^[2] and who since 2016 has served as the 14th president of Western Washington University (Western).^[3] He is a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers,^[4] and a recipient of the 2023 District VIII Leadership Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.^[5]

Sabah Randhawa
14th President of Western Washington University
Incumbent
Assumed office August 1, 2016
Preceded by	Bruce Shepard
Personal details
Born	1954 (age 70–71) Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Spouse	Uzma Ahmad[1]
Education	University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore (BS) Oregon State University (MS) Arizona State University (PhD)
Academic work
Discipline	Engineering Academic administration
Institutions	Oregon State University Western Washington University

Early life and education

Randhawa was born in Lahore in 1954; neither of his parents attended college. Randhawa and his sister attended a co-educational school in Pakistan that was operated by the Church of England. Their tuition was paid by Sabah's father, a pharmaceutical salesman.^[6] He now holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, which he received from the University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore in 1976.^[7] After graduating from university in Pakistan, Randhawa worked as an engineer at a chemical plant in the countryside.^[6] He saved up money for two years until he had enough to travel overseas for study. Randhawa also holds an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Oregon State University, which he received in 1980, and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University in 1983.^[8]

Career

Some time after studying as a graduate student at Oregon State University (OSU), Randhawa worked in multiple roles within OSU's engineering college;^[9] he eventually became the Provost & Executive Vice President, the institution's second-ranked administrator.^[10][11]

During his time at OSU, Randhawa was one of four candidates vying to become the chancellor of University of Nebraska–Lincoln.^[12][13] He was also a candidate for the chancellor position at Southern Illinois University Carbondale before withdrawing in 2015.^[14] He withdrew his candidacy for the Nebraska chancellorship in March 2016 after he was declared the sole finalist for the presidential search at Western.^[15][16][17]

In March 2016, the Western Board of Trustees voted unanimously to nominate Randhawa as university president.^[18] One of the terms in his presidential contract at Western was that he would become a tenured professor on top of his role as president.^[19]

In 2020, a whistleblower reported that the university's education department fraudulently used "ghost courses," non-existent courses for which students were earning credit, to assist the students in receiving federal financial aid. The whistleblower successfully sued the state of Washington for retaliation, alleging in part that Randhawa had fired the whistleblower for refusing to remove the word fraud from the original ghost courses report.^[20]