College Try
By Jeff Abernathy September 21, 2010 4:15 pmOne doesn't grow up wanting to be a college president. Firefighter, yes. Doctor, certainly. But college president? Even the principal's kid wouldn't have thought of it.
But here I am, starting out my first academic year at Alma College, a liberal arts college I've known and admired for years.
For colleges and universities, presidential transitions offer a great opportunity to answer lingering questions about identity, to determine aspirations, to recall core values.
For the new president -- just another freshman, I've been saying on campus as students have returned--the aspiration is to listen and learn from the traditions of the place, even as I prepare for a plan that will inevitably involve change.
Every day, I have the opportunity to model the sort of president everyone wants: collegial, ready with a joke, reflective, strategic, transparent.
Of course, I also have the opportunity to model the kind of president no one wants: dull, overly cautious, mushy, living at 5,000 feet, top-down thinker.