Willamette and Pacific University presidents discuss next steps following planned merger announcement

Blitz the Bearcat and Boxer the Qilin encircle each other and hold each other's tails in their jaws. Art by Addie Martin.

On Dec. 11, 2025, Willamette President Steve Thorsett sent an email to students, announcing the news of their intent to merge with Pacific University. The same day, Thorsett and Pacific University President Jenny Coyle spoke in a joint interview to The Collegian in order to provide further clarification on the merger.

Initial discussions between the two schools began in the late spring of 2025, Coyle noted. The talks over merging with Pacific, a university in Forest Grove, Oregon, come nearly five years after Willamette’s acquisition of the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in June 2021. 

Thorsett explained that the merger is somewhat unusual for the fact that one university is not necessarily absorbing the other. “It’s being considered a merger of equals,” and the two universities are “forming something new,” he said.

Despite the news, the merger remains in its infancy. “It is a very long process, with lots of stages,” Thorsett said. “And it takes at best one year, and in the case of PNCA, it took two years.” 

Specifics of the merger remain undetermined as the two universities organize and plan. “These conversations take a long time to think through,” Coyle explained, as the universities need to consider leadership positions, potential program locations and more. The next step for both universities is to work out a more detailed agreement.

In order to officially merge, the universities first must seek the approval of the detailed legal agreement by the board of trustees. Following this, an accreditor review will begin with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), a non-profit organization recognized by the United States Department of Education. Then, the university must have the proposal reviewed by stakeholders, start the corporate merger, and then get federal review and approval before the official university merger, Thorsett said. 

​​For now, the proposed merger remains in the early stages as the Willamette board of trustees meets in February to discuss further details, according to the Willamette website.

Coyle and Thorsett assured that as Willamette and Pacific currently stand, no layoffs have been planned. “We’re in the due-dilligence phase, right now we don’t even know what that structure of the two institutions looks like,” Coyle said. Thorsett elaborated that in regards to the PNCA merger, “There were some duplicated things that both schools did. Eliminating the duplicated work allowed in many cases a reallocation of people into other things that were important. … We’re not going into this motivated by a desire to cut staff,” he said.

Pacific and Willamette must also take into consideration their two athletic programs. Thorsett and Coyle described a potential plan for their athletics program. “We chatted with the NCAA, and we can have two separate programs,” Thorsett said, meaning that the Pacific Boxers and Willamette Bearcats can continue to compete as normal. “The project would have died early on if we had not been able to find a way to protect Bearcat and Boxer athletics.”

Thorsett stressed to students that under the current plan, “Willamette remains Willamette.”