New Idaho State University President Stutters?!

Fun news! A person who stutters is the new president of Idaho State University. And not just that - we see him stutter in speeches.

Dr. Robert Wagner was one of 80 applicants for the new president position. They got down to 12 semifinalists, and then 5 were selected for interviews. And of those, it was Robert Wagner who was offered the position. He was approved unanimously.

My friend Nicole from MySpeech sent me a reddit link announcing it - not only does he stutter, but he openly stutters.

Some of the replies (from other stutterers) came in right away that his stutter is hardly noticeable. I, along with others, disagree. His stutter is certainly noticeable - not in a bad way. He’s hardly struggling… but he IS stuttering. He’s also using techniques - you can hear easy onsets, etc. But you want to know what I don’t hear him doing much of? Avoiding. Panicking. He goes into the word, stutter or not.

And they wanted him to be in charge of the university, because he was best for the job. And the job includes public speaking; it includes being an image for the university. Stuttering isn’t a disqualifer.

Here’s a 2022 speech he gave. His speech begins at 19:30. Note that it is religious in nature, but it’s really lovely to listen to his voice, in my opinion.

He shares about his stutter at minute 33. He’s got a couple times when he says words starting with “sss” that it’s truly stuck for a few seconds… and he calmly pushes through it.

As a note about ISU: according to their speech program’s website, Idaho State University has a 2-week stuttering intensive interview done by Dr. Dan Hudock, a person who stutters and CCC-SLP. Here’s an interview with Dr. Dan Hudock about stuttering therapy from 2018.

Here’s the announcement from East Idaho News.

Note: Thank you to Caleb Sanford for the original notice, and correction of the spelling of Dr. Wagner’s name.