Rising stars: you may not have heard of these five college leaders before, but we suspect you'll be hearing a lot from them.

HERE IN THE UNIVERSITY BUSINESS OFFICES, we often hear about college and university leaders who are doing great things for their institutions, yet they don't always garner the same attention that a larger or more elite school leader might receive. The following profiles are our attempt to begin rectifying that. We sought the recommendations of trustworthy sources around the country, and then chose this initial group of "rising stars"--Roy Nirschel, Roger Williams University (R.I.); John Fry, Franklin & Marshall College (Pa.); Shirley Reed, South Texas College; Laura Skandera Trombley, Pitzer College (Calif.); and G. David Pollack, Birmingham-Southern University (Ala.)--because we believe that good ideas and noteworthy achievements can be recognized by anyone, no matter the size of the institution.

Spark of TRANSFORMATION

Roy Nirschel, Roger Williams University

When the board at this Rhode Island university began searching for the institution's new president, they knew they wanted a leader. They got a change agent.

By Caryn Meyers Fliegler

LOOK UP THE WORD "GROWTH" IN THE dictionary, and you will be hard-pressed to find a much better definition than what's happened at Roger Williams University.

Since 2001, the school--which enrolls nearly 5,000 students in 36 majors and five professional schools--has seen a 100 percent increase in applications, a 50 percent increase in enrollment, a 50 percent improvement in the graduation rate, and $58 million in new endowment funds.

All without steroids.

RWU, which hugs a stretch of water along Rhode Island's squiggly coastline, was created as a junior college in 1956. While it started out using space in various public buildings in Providence, it moved to Bristol in the 1960s as Roger Williams College, a four-year institution, and then became a full-fledged university in 1992. The university developed several programs with respectable reputations, including those in architecture, business, law, construction management, and marine science.

Yet it grappled with a perception problem. People didn't know of the school, and if they did they didn't always think much of it. In the late 1990s, the university showed an applicant acceptance rate of more than 90 percent. The graduation rate was 34 percent. Some folks referred to RWU as "Rich White Underachiever."

"I have watched Roger Williams over the years evolve from a community college with a very tenuous foothold on the educational community to become a full-fledged college, and then a university," says Chas. Freeman Jr., former U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who now sits on RWU'S Board of Overseers.

Freeman is one of many people who believe that under Roy Nirschel, the president of RWU since 2001, the university has been like a teenager growing into adulthood. Its strong points and potential have come into clearer focus. Its mission has become more fine-tuned and purposeful.

"What's happened under Nirschel is that this frankly third-rate educational establishment has moved very rapidly up the ranks," says Freeman, who also served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. "He's got a gift for innovation, for finding the niches that others have overlooked."

Call it a gift, a drive, or learned behavior whatever the mechanics of Roy Nirschel's inner workings, this president is making things happen and moving up in the world of higher education. Many leaders can learn from his moves.

A Bar Set High

Nirschel crouched atop Mount Kilimanjaro, face raw from the wind and cold, mouth covered by material protecting skin from frigid air. He had climbed workplace ladders and faced challenges before, but this was among his most hard-won triumphs.

He posed for a picture adjacent to a sign etched with yellow lettering marking the top of the African continent. As the camera snapped, Nirschel held "Little Roger," a small cutout of the mascot of Roger Williams University. The moment embodied what Nirschel wanted for RWU, its faculty, its staff, and its students: to reach new heights with a wide view of the world.

The Kilimanjaro crest was just 11 months ago and Nirschel has now been president of Roger Williams for nearly six years. (As for Little Roger, he's made trips to such high-profile destinations as the White House since his Kilimanjaro climb.)

In his time at RWU, Nirschel has managed to change the essence of the school, the way it is perceived by others, and its outlook on the world. He has overseen so many initiatives that the university seems just back from a much-needed vacation--focused, energized, invigorated.

A number of qualities make Nirschel an up-and-comer in higher education. Here are insights into just a few.

A Personable Leader

Nirschel has a way with people. Just follow him around campus and this quality surfaces quickly. Students sometimes look bewildered when they receive a smile and a "hello" from the president (it's like he knows them or something).

Nirschel credits this trait in part to having grown up in a working class family--Dad was a firefighter, Morn was a homemaker--in Stamford, Conn. He feels comfortable around all kinds of individuals and appreciates the value of their work.

Nirschel also has a strong internal compass. Unlike some leaders who boast the same trait but can't seem to deal with discord, he believes in collaboration. When he first joined RWU, he launched a strategic planning process and formed committees to examine seven key areas of concern on campus. The committees included more than 125 individuals and were purposefully cross-pollinated, so as to remove members from their comfort zones. Someone from Admissions, for example, was assigned to look at graduation rates.

"It took many people here a little bit by surprise," says Anthony Hollingsworth, chair of the department of Foreign Languages and an associate professor of classical and Germanic languages. "He came in here bringing with him almost a business plan or a corporate feel, and he really compelled faculty to start working more with staff and administration." Hollingsworth adds, "There had definitely been a desire to break down silos, and I think that was happening, but he put a lot of impetus into it and at the same time expected results."

While still a newbie on the job, Nirschel navigated his way through what could have been a horrendous process: negotiating a contract with the university's faculty union.

"Roy's presidency began right in the middle of some very contentious faculty contract negotiations. To make matters worse, the outgoing administration had suspended faculty pay," says Kathy Micken, associate professor of Marketing at RWU. "A new president could have made himself scarce, choosing to be ensconced in the office surrounded by other administrators. Instead, Roy made a point of walking around campus, including the campus center where he was sure to encounter both faculty and students--and was sure to hear what faculty were thinking. If he did not hear, he made it a point to ask."

Nirschel helped shepherd a new faculty contract to approval by a 4-to-1 margin. While it had some controversial aspects, the contract also cleared the way for faculty gains. "It is a contract that expects results," says Hollingsworth. "It rewards people for doing good work and for publishing, and it sends a very clear message that we want our faculty to be not only pedagogically active but also in scholarship.... If people do good research and good teaching, they can receive merit. We see that there is more pay in it, and there is more pay when people get promoted."

The relationship between faculty members and Nirschel is still strengthening. "His 'management by walking around' style continues," says Micken. "He has judiciously joined in faculty e-mail discussions, issues presidential missives on hot topics, and seeks the advice and counsel of faculty both formally and informally. As one faculty colleague e-mailed to the rest of us recently, when a topic of importance needs a good hearing, 'coffee with President Nirschel is a very attractive alternative. And the coffee in the Administration Building is very good.'"

A Belief in Focus

Roger Williams University boasts myriad indicators of transformation under Nirschel. Its endowment hovers around $95 million (compared to $37 million five years ago) and the school is running an approximately $10 million surplus. The business school recently received accreditation from the International Association for Management Education (AACSB), putting it in an elite group.

Yet the university's clarification of core values and mission may well be the school's greatest recent advance. This is a process that Nirschel believes in deeply. Namely, the university's institutional values are: a love of learning as an intrinsic value; preparation for a career and future study; development of undergraduate research opportunities; service to the community; adoption of a global perspective; and nurturing of a caring and respectful community.

Nirschel ensures that decisions made on campus, whether about budgets, programs, or faculty projects, relate directly to the above values. "You set the values, you define the mission," says Nirschel. "Those values may mean something different in the business school or the law school, but if you talk to the deans and say 'love of learning, research, service, global perspective, respectful and caring environment'--those are the core values--you buy into it and how it is operationalized in your school."

Funding ties into how those values are articulated, he adds. "I say to people all the time, a lack of resources is not the biggest problem. A lack of a mission-driven, well-defined plan is the problem. You give me a terrific plan that ties into our core values, that adds value to students' experience, we'll give you the money. If you give me an idea that doesn't really resonate with the mission of the university, the odds of getting funding are in the zero to zero category."

An Understanding of Image

A fall 2002 survey of faculty and staff, which asked what people outside of RWU said to them about the institution, indicated that RWU wasn't even on many folks' radar screens. "If it was, high-profile programs such as architecture or marine biology were all people knew about, except for perhaps the beautiful waterfront campus," says Micken, who was involved with the survey.

"If we asked the same question today," she says, "my guess is that the responses would be much different."

That's largely because Nirschel believes in making one's strengths known. One of the president's most notable accomplishments has been engineering a shift in public perception of Roger Williams.

When Nirschel first joined RWU's administration, he involved campus and community constituencies in creating a branding campaign, complete with a slogan, "Learning to Bridge the World." The university purchased billboard space for ads, not necessarily in Rhode Island but beyond. In the campaign's second year, a freshman approached Nirschel on campus. The new student remarked on the university's visibility, noting that he had seen a billboard down in Florida. "The one near Orlando, near Sea World?" Nirschel asked. "Yeah, great billboard," the student said.

But there wasn't a billboard in Florida. "People were saying they saw us in places where we weren't," Nirschel says. "Some people say billboards are tacky, advertising's tacky. I don't agree. We don't do billboards now, but people saw us everywhere. People would see a billboard in Westchester County (N.Y.), and a week later they would open U.S. News & World Report and think we were everywhere."

An ad campaign and public relations push mean little, however, without good stories to tell. Since taking on his role, Nirschel has set about helping RWU build its brag book.

This past spring alone, the university gathered a thick stack of news clips. RWU broke ground on a new marine science center, the Luther Blount Shellfish Hatchery and Oyster Restoration Center. First Lady Laura Bush spoke at graduation. And three young women who had witnessed horrors growing up in Afghanistan graduated from Roger Williams, thanks to the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, a scholarship program founded by Paula Nirschel, the president's wife. (The initiative provides Afghan women with four-year scholarships to RWU and other U.S. colleges and universities, bringing the students together at events and supporting them as they return to their home country to create lasting change.)

"We've got great projects going on," says President Nirschel, "and we're telling people the story."

A Global Mindset 

International relations and a global perspective lie high on Nirschel's list of priorities. His work is "projecting us far beyond the campus and region, so that we'll improve qualitatively by being connected both locally and globally, which matches the 'Learning to Bridge the World' identity that he's created," says Stephen White, dean of RWU'S School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation.

Exhibit A of that global mindset: The Center for Macro Projects and Diplomacy, created in 2003. Working with Nirschel, White and RWU Overseer and MIT Professor Frank Davidson (who helped develop the English Channel Tunnel) created the center to produce broad proposals to meet challenges around the world.

Rather than just ponder issues like a think tank, the center acts as a "do tank," as Nirschel likes to say. It teams researchers, policy experts, and academics from various disciplines to create real proposals. For example, the center has overseen development of a strategy for the infrastructure of an independent Palestinian state. High-ranking United Nations officials, engineers, architects, and international relations experts, among others, have joined in planning Palestinian ports, an offshore island, and linkages between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The center has secured $250,000 for feasibility studies.

"The president has been centrally involved in that," says White. "We work out the agenda for the work together. He really sees it as one of the key elements of the globalization of the university."

Study abroad and admissions of international students have also blossomed under Nirschel's guidance. In 2005, 39 percent of juniors at RWU participated in study-abroad programs. Five years ago, students had five sites to choose from. Now there are 39, including RWU campuses in Florence and Ho Chi Minh City. The newest destinations include Jordan, India, Costa Pica, South Africa, Germany, and Argentina.

In April, sophomores with 3.0 GPAs or higher got invited to hear Wolfgang Vorwerk, the consul general of Germany in Boston, speak; had their passport pictures taken free of charge; and completed passport forms. Eighteen-yea-old Hilary Wehner had never had her own passport until that day. "I feel like he's trying to get us to be more international," she says of Nirschel. Indeed, the event was his idea.

An Open Mind

In 2004, the Roger Williams University College Republicans attempted to make a point about race-based preferences by advertising a "Whites Only" scholarship. The move, while intended somewhat as a joke, brought tensions to the surface. Nirschel issued a statement on the university's commitment to diversity and to free, but civil, speech. "He did more than admonish the students," says Micken. "He used the incident to initiate a program of 'civil discourse.'"

Through the initiative, a variety of speakers have been brought to RWU's campus, from Salman Rushdie to Professor David Wilkins of Harvard Law School to the civil rights attorney Morris Dees. A new journal, Reason & Respect: A Journal of Civil Discourse, has been established as well. "This initiative really compels people to think and to speak with some reason and some respect, so that their arguments are made in a kind of manner that does not make people uncomfortable, and that we create an environment on campus that allows people to think and speak in a variety of ways," says Robert Engvall, an associate professor of Justice Studies who co-edits Reason & Respect.

"It is a vindication of the name of the school," notes Freeman, adding that Roger Williams stood for tolerance of differences and civil discourse.

Freeman actually first met Nirschel when he was asked to speak on campus about the invasion of Iraq. Freeman believed the U.S. government was taking the country into an ambush in Iraq, yet he spoke to a largely Republican RWU student body. "[Nirschel] always seems to recognize the need to cause people to reflect about their own beliefs," Freeman says. "I think that is the mark of a great educator."

VITAL STATS:

Roy J. Nirschel

Age: 54

Title: President, Roger Williams University, Bristol, R.I., 2001-present

Prior Positions: President, Newbury College (Mass.); vice president for University Advancement, University of Miami; assistant vice president and director of development and alumni affairs, University of Pittsburgh; director of development and Alumni Relations, University of Hartford (Conn.)

Family: Wife, Paula Nirschel, and three children

Education: Southern Connecticut State University, B.S., 1974;University of Miami, master's of Public Administration, 1994, Ph.D. in Higher Education, 1997 Dissertation: "Charitable Giving as Obligation or Option," on charitable giving habits in Cuban and Jewish communities

Blast from the past: Nirschel was once a conservative student activist

Favorite Book: Snow, by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf, 2004), and On the Road, by Jack Kerouac (Penguin, Rev. 1999)

Favorite Author: Orhan Pamuk

Current Read: The Price of Admission, by Dan Golden (Crown, 2006)

10 Leadership Tips

Roy Nirschel has a unique set of beliefs and skills that he uses to help guide Roger Williams University. Here are some of his tenets:

1. Define an institutional mission.

2. Develop a clear branding campaign.

3. Respect an institution's past while forging into the future.

4. Go back to the mission when making decisions.

5. Give people positive things to associate with the institution (build the brand).

6. Collaborate with key parties ...

7. ... but stay true to core convictions.

8. Engage people and celebrate their accomplishments.

9. Examine and value quantitative evidence.

10. Get out of your office whenever possible.

Reclaiming A COMMUNITY

John Fry, Franklin & Marshall College

This president has made a long-term commitment to improving the institution's Pennsylvania home. It's a challenge he has tackled before.

By Tim Goral 

MENTION LANCASTER, PA., TO SOME PEOPLE AND THE image that will likely come to mind is of black, horse-drawn buggies driven by stern-faced Amish farmers in broad-brimmed hats. But beyond the idyllic farmlands of Pennsylvania's Dutch country, Lancaster is a city with problems like any other. Although a major effort is under way to revitalize the area, Lancaster suffers from high unemployment as well as concerns for safety.

Since John Fry came to Lancaster in 2003 to take the helm of Franklin & Marshall College, he has made it his mission to change not only the way the college is perceived on the outside, but to reclaim the surrounding community to make Lancaster a more desirable place to live and learn.

Urban decay is a contributing factor to the problem, one that hit too close to home in September, when a F&M student was shot during a holdup in the downtown area. In the days following the incident (from which the student has since recovered), the college announced a $25,000 reward for information leading to the shooter's capture.

"I worry about my students out at night late, coming home and getting into situations that are not healthy ones or positive ones," Fry says. "I worry about their health and welfare. They're working very hard and are active in so many different things, and many go out and party too late. They put themselves in an awkward spot--not just at Franklin & Marshall but at many other institutions--and it's the 3 a.m. phone call that we all dread. I've had that phone call before; it's the worst thing."

In late September, Fry announced that Franklin & Marshall was committing $400,000 for increased security in the area. This is in addition to other security improvements--such as installing lights and security cameras in trouble--prone areas--the college has put in place over the last three years.

"I think a lot of the things we are doing are just extending what has already been done, as opposed to just reacting to this and throwing up our hands," he says.

Other security improvements include extending the campus network of emergency call boxes into the surrounding neighborhood, and having campus security officers patrol the area streets. F&M will also pay for additional officers from a private security company to patrol local streets on bicycles and accompany students on campus shuttle buses.

The incident has been a temporary setback to the progress made since Fry arrived, but it has made him more determined to help turn Lancaster's fortunes around.

"The minute you let your guard down is when you get demolished," he says. "You've just got to stay on top of these things. I often tell people that, in terms of strengthening community, you have to be completely committed, 365 days a year, for the long term."

Working from Experience

Fry is no stranger to this challenge. In his former post as executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania, he was instrumental in revitalizing the university's West Philadelphia neighborhood. The area was plagued with deteriorating housing, few business opportunities, and an unsafe environment. Fry built a coalition of university, business, and governmental support for a multimillion dollar investment program that breathed new life into the area. In just a few years, residential property values have gone up around UPenn and the crime rate has dropped.

Now he wants to repeat the "Penn Model," as it has become known, at Franklin & Marshall. The college has its sights set on the long-abandoned, 47-acre property once owned by Armstrong World Industries. The property was transferred from Armstrong to the Lancaster Economic Development Company in September, and, following demolition of the Armstrong plant, much of the area will be developed as playing fields and multiuse space for the school.

Adjacent to the campus and near the Armstrong site, work began this summer on construction of the $30 million, 200,000-square-foot retail and residential complex called College Row.

The project is being developed by Philadelphia-based Campus Apartments on college-owned land along Harrisburg Avenue. Slated to open next fall, it will feature 50,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and about 150,000 square feet of residential space on the upper floors. It will house about 400 F&M juniors and seniors.

Other projects include the new international center on College Avenue, which opened last month, and the Barshinger Life Sciences and Philosophy Building, which is still under construction.

Fry says these improvements are part of a master plan to make F&M and the surrounding area more appealing to students and young people.

"When I came here I knew there were some things that were Achilles heels for the institution, and one of them was Lancaster," he says. "When people think of Lancaster they think rural, they think Amish, they think country--they think boring. In fact, we enjoy this sort of wonderful diverse urban place that is our home. It's a cool, fun, small city, with great restaurants, and our arts are exploding. It's much more dynamic than you were led to believe. And we want to convey that we do things at our institution that you wouldn't expect a small college to have the capacity to do."

Writers House

One example of this is Writers House, a project he had been involved with at Penn. "In my initial tour of the F&M campus, I was visiting with the English department and they told me about this emerging group of writers that they had--faculty and students who were doing creative writing and looking to publish things--but they didn't have the ability to support them or even convene them as a group," Fry says. "One of the things we had at Penn was the Kelly Writers House. Writers House gave us the ability to invite distinguished writers from around the world to come and take residence. They spend time talking about their craft, critiquing the work of constituencies there, and giving readings--basically creating a literary culture.

"I said, why don't we do one of our own here?" Fry recalls, "and their first reaction was that we can't because we're not Penn, we're not big. I told them we don't have to be big to broaden ourselves. I know exactly how much the Penn program cost because I helped fund it. So let's do one here."

The Philadelphia Alumni Writers House, as it is formally known, opened in the fall of 2004. The 3,600-square-foot, two-story house contains a main reading room and performance space, two seminar rooms (one a technology-enhanced classroom), a kitchen and dining room, staff offices, and spaces for student writing clubs.

Helping build the Writers House program is Kerry Sherin Wright, recruited as director from the Penn program. As evidence of the program's success, the literary journals that in the past were published only occasionally now come out two or three times a year because of all the submissions. "In just a couple of years, what was sort of a twinkle in a professor's eyes is now a fully built art program, which has really now gained stamina," Fry says.

Path to the Presidency

Unlike many college presidents, Fry did not climb the ranks of academia when he came to F&M, but his background made him uniquely suited for the challenges he was taking on. As a partner with the former Coopers & Lybrand national higher education consulting practice, Fry had spent many years working with hundreds of colleges and universities, big and small, public and private, and experiencing the higher education space from many perspectives.

"I think it was very helpful that I early on learned firsthand the incredible diversity of American higher education and different ways in which people cope with their challenges," he says. "I developed a real appreciation for lots of different circumstances and lots of different missions. That was great because I didn't come to any of my subsequent jobs from any particular bias, because I understood that there are lots of ways to skin the cat."

The projects were usually with presidents or provosts or governing boards or chief operating officers, dealing with the critical issues of the day. The access afforded to a highly paid consultant is immediate and intimate, he says, because clients want results from their investment.

One of those clients was responsible for his next career step. When Judith Rodin was named president of the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, she met with Fry to discuss the work he had been doing at Penn. A year later, she asked Fry to join the university as executive vice president, an invitation that took him by surprise.

"I had no experience to do a job like that. I've met plenty of executive VPs, and consulted for plenty of them, but I've never actually done the job," he recalls. "A consultant's worse nightmare is to implement your own recommendations. But I decided to do that because, as much as I enjoyed being a partner, I felt this was an opportunity really to work with what I have learned but have never been able to practice."

By the time Franklin & Marshall approached him, he had developed a fascination with the way schools worked and wanted to take it further.

Fry admits that it wasn't always easy going in the beginning, especially with a faculty that was wary of someone from outside academia.

"I think we've had a great relationship since. Part of this is because I had approached them honestly at the start, and have dealt with them, I think, with great honesty and transparency since then. I believe that's the No. 1 factor in developing a successful relationship with the faculty," Fry says.

Developing the Whole Student

Though he faces occasional opposition to some of his plans, Fry is determined to see them through to help improve the community and the F&M experience.

"I feel very strongly that the liberal arts experience is the complete package. It is very important that there is the appropriate emphasis on the work done in the classroom or laboratory between the faculty and students, but you also want that intellectual discourse to transcend the formal settings and permeate the entire institution, whether it's in a wonderful bookstore cafe, a playing field, or in the new college houses, which have replaced our old residential system."

There needs to be a real examination of the public social life to answer questions like why there is so much alcohol use and abuse, he says, or what role athletics play at a small institution. "I believe these are all linked together and they all contribute to the quality of what happens here intellectually for our students," Fry says. "I think institutions should be more intentional about these things. They should be thinking about how to give students the ability to grow from their time here--not only intellectually, but also as leaders, as people who are going to take their place in society."

VITAL STATS:

John A. Fry

Title: President, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa., 2003-present

Prior positions: Executive vice president, University of Pennsylvania; consultant with the former KPMG Peat Marwick; partner in the former Coopers & Lybrand's National Higher Education Consulting Practice

Education: Lafayette College, Pa.; New York University Stem Business School (MBA)

Family: Wife, Cara and three children

Right Person, RIGHT TIME

Shirley Reed, South Texas College

A clear vision and the ability to get others on board have been instrumental in this first-time president's role in building a community college from scratch.

By John Pulley 

TWELVE YEARS AGO, SHIRLEY REED TRAVELED DEEP INTO the heart of Texas. Arriving in a region of the Rio Grande Valley beset by poverty, unemployment, and some of the lowest education rates in the country, she set about building a community college.

Reed was a first-time president. The institution's trustees were green, as well. They had no bank account, no professors, no computers, and no students. South Texas College, based in McAllen, a city located 510 miles southeast of Chihuahua, Mexico, did have a surplus of ambition. The state of affairs was summarized by a terse Texan putdown: all hat and no cattle.

"We were starting from scratch," recalls Gary Gurwitz, one of the original trustees appointed by then Gov. Ann Richards. "I had more books in my house than we had at the college." Undaunted, Reed predicted that the institution would serve 20,000 students within 20 years. "People chuckled," says William Serrata, the college's vice president for Student Services.

Since then, South Texas College has been one of the nation's fastest-growing community colleges. Today it serves some 18,000 students at three campuses. A recent building binge has brought 16 new structures in 16 months. STC has 90 degree programs and is one of three community colleges in Texas to offer baccalaureate degrees. Three accreditation visits by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Serrata says, have been passed "at full muster."

Reed's story is a classic one of what can happen when a president's abilities are commensurate with institutional challenges. She had a clear idea of what the college Would look like, and the ability to get other people to see it, too. In South Texas, the consensus is that Reed was the right person at the right time.

Reaching the President's Post

Shirley Reed wasn't born to be president of anything. She grew up in a modest north Canadian household. Her father, a nickel miner, performed "very dangerous, dirty work" to support the family, she says.

At 5, Reed realized that there was not another little girl living within 50 miles. "It was clear to me that if you are going to make it in this world, you have to be the fastest runner, climb the highest trees, be the bravest, and work the hardest just to compete," she says, adding that it's "an important part of how I have built the college. I was on a mission. I was going to get it done no matter what."

Her parents moved the family to Florida to provide better opportunities for their daughter.

Her advancement to a better life took a detour when, at 16, she married, as she describes, "an alcoholic, abusive husband who was not going to let me get ahead." A decade passed before she got back on track. At 26, divorced and determined to make something of herself, Reed enrolled at St. Petersburg Junior College and began working toward a degree.

A hospital lab technician at night, she says she would go to school by day "and sleep when I could."

It took six years for her to earn an associate's degree in liberal arts, but by then she was on a roll. She went on to earn a baccalaureate, two master's degrees, and a doctorate, each from a different institution.

She calls her MBA "the most useful degree I ever earned." Yet it's the opportunities at the community college, she says, that "literally saved my life."

Credentialed to the hilt, Reed set about acquiring the practical, hands-on experience that has been essential to her success at STC. In the 1970s, she joined Spoon River College (Ill.), where she was tasked with creating a learning resources center. "Many know it as the library," she says, poking fun at the jargon of the day. "They gave me a vacant bakery and wished me luck."

From that community college, she moved on to another one: Northland Pioneer College, which serves the poverty-stricken population comprising Arizona's Navajo, Hopi, and White Mountain Apache tribes. Reed was instrumental in creating a distance education program that, relying on microwave technology, delivered instruction to students at 22 locations across two sprawling counties. She managed the fiscal, administrative, and campus operations of four campuses and six satellite centers. "It seems that I've always been a pioneer," she says.

Spotting a Lone Star 

South Texas College is the state's only two-year institution conceived by statute. When the Texas legislature passed a law, in 1993, to create it, McAllen and its environs were home to about 600,000 overwhelmingly Hispanic residents. It was the largest metropolitan area in the state not served by a community college.

The region was poor. Congress's passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 resulted in an increased importation of Mexican produce, further decimating the region's withering agrarian economy. At the time, Hidalgo County, of which McAllen is the seat, had an unemployment rate of about 24 percent. In neighboring Starr County, which is included in the community college district, unemployment eclipsed 40 percent.

Reed calls it "criminal neglect" on the state's part ot have a region with 600,000 people but no access to a community college.

A stipulation of South Texas College's creation: Local residents would pay for it. Reed's challenge was to convince Latinos to endorse the institution at the polls, pass a bond referendum, and create a taxing district. It was a tall order for a "blond, non-Spanish speaking, non-Hispanic woman" from the Canadian hinterland, says Michael Metke, a protege of Reed's and president of Lake Washington Technical College, near Seattle.

"That was a major hurdle," Reeds says. "The community could not comprehend the critical role that we would play in this region.... We did what any smart politician does. We walked the streets. We went door to door. We registered voters. We helped people get to the polls."

It worked. Voters endorsed the college, created a tax district, and floated a $20 million bond issue to construct the first buildings. In 2001, Reed went on the campaign trail again and convinced voters to pass a $98 million bond referendum for the college.

Few people could understand her vision when she was first hired, says Leila Salinas, coordinator of the college's instructional resources lab. "She really could see things that other people could not see."

Devising a Business Plan

Reed likens the creation of a college to the launch of a company. "It's just like starting a business," she says. "Where are we going to locate? How do we market it? How do we price the product?"

Initially, the college held classes in any unoccupied space administrators could find, including church basements, police stations, a converted laundromat, and vacant buildings, recalls Reed, who bought up surplus portable buildings that had been used as food-stamp distribution centers. "The joke at the time was that the president goes to garage sales and buys the garages," she says.

By all accounts, Reed has acquitted herself with gusto--putting in 12- to 14-hour days, seven days a week, for the first five years.

"She is aggressive. She is enthusiastic. She is organized," Gurwitz says. "You know when she asks you to do something that she's ready to stay with you and work side by side to get it done."

Early in her tenure, Reed realized she needed a crackerjack staff but couldn't afford to hire established top-shelf talent. She would have to grow her own. She assembled her staff by giving opportunities to inexperienced people in whom she saw leadership potential. If they performed well, she gave them more. "She told us that the college was like a train that was starting to move and that if we were not ready, we would not be able to keep up," Salinas says.

Little by little, she created a team. Subordinates say Reed's confidence allows her to embrace the good ideas that bubble up from her staff, that her generosity of spirit allows her to share credit for the college's success.

Staff members with an affinity for hard work thrived. "She took a chance on me when I was relatively young," Serrata says. "She has allowed me to grow with the institution."

Others burned out. "She pushed her staff so hard that I thought some of them would break," says Mike Perez, city manager for McAllen and a member of the committee that interviewed presidential candidates, including Reed. "She was relentless."

Reed concedes that the work simply wore some people out. But she doesn't possess the demeanor of a drill sergeant. Wedded to her tenacity and resilience is an easygoing manner that disarms people.

"She's so down to earth, you think you're talking to a fourth-grade teacher," Perez says. "She's got about an inch of softness around her before you hit the steel. Don't be fooled by her high voice and her bubbly personality. The woman is tenacious and tough."

The College of Choice

The president's commitment to South Texas College and its students is informed by her own experience. Her life took a dramatic upward turn when she enrolled in community college, she says. Reed is determined to provide that same chance for learning to the people of Start and Hidalgo counties. "I know what it meant to me," she says. "Everyone should have the same opportunity."

In STC's early years, the institution billed itself as "The People's College." A logo depicted people reaching upward, a symbol of how STC would "give everyone an opportunity to be an equal participant in society," Reed says. "The battle cry was, 'Go to college and earn a living wage so that you can provide for your family.'"

The college has been a transformative force. Since its opening, the Starr County unemployment rate has declined from 40 percent to about 13 percent. In Hidalgo, unemployment has fallen from 24 percent to 7 percent. The consensus opinion in this corner of the state is that Shirley Reed and her college have been a critical factor in the region's rising economic fortunes.

Today, STC bills itself as "The College of Choice." Its leaders routinely collaborate with employers to train workers in the right skills. They strive, as well, to prepare students for advanced academic endeavors, including the pursuit of four-year and advanced degrees.

Across constituencies, Reed has pushed to make the college user-friendly. "She has an outstanding perception of what students would like to see and what their needs are and what we can do to fulfill those. She knows that it's not easy when you have too many responsibilities, family and work and school," Salinas says. "I think she really gets her fulfillment from knowing that what she does matters and that it will make a difference to a lot of people who need it."

The secret of her success? Reed says there is none: "Quite frankly, the road map was very clear. It was simply a case of one hurdle at a time, one partnership at a time, one coalition at a time."

VITAL STATS:

Shirley A. Reed

Title: President South Texas College, 1994 to present

Prior Positions: Northland Pioneer College (Ariz.), district VP for Administrative Services, associate dean for learning resources; Spoon River College (Ill.), director of learning resources

Education: St. Petersburg Junior College, associate's degree in liberal arts; University of South Florida, bachelor's degree in English; University of Hawaii, Honolulu, master's in library science; Illinois State University, Ph.D. in education; Western International University (Ariz.), MBA

Family: Met her current husband, a retired car dealer, on a golf course; She says, "He takes care of me full time; he does the grocery shopping and everything."

Favorite electronic device: A gadget used on the golf course to estimate driving distances

Last book read: If Harry Potter Ran General Electric: Leadership Wisdom from the World of the Wizards!, by Tom Morris (Doubleday, 2006)

Most admired historical leader: Winston Churchill

Second choice for a career: Prosecutor or district attorney

Leading a College with a CONSCIENCE

Laura Skandera Trombley, Pitzer College

Known for her close connection with students and faculty, this leader knows that moving ahead is about working together.

By Tim Coral

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE RECOGnized as a "college with a conscience"?

The phrase denotes an institution with "an ministration committed to social responsibility and a student body actively engaged in serving society," says Robert Franek of The Princeton Review. "Education at these schools isn't only about private gain; it's about the public good."

At Pitzer College (Calif.), one of The Claremont Colleges, the label is a validation of the ideals and principles followed by President Laura Skandera Trombley, her staff, and her students. "Our students really try and practice what it means to be socially responsible on a daily basis," she says. "But the faculty, in their curriculum and in our various centers, really use that as an important academic component in what they do."

Pitzer prides itself on linking intellectual inquiry with interdisciplinary studies, cultural immersion, social responsibility, and community connectivity, a trait that even carries over to the school's alumni.

Skandera Trombley says the school received a generous monetary gift from alumni and parents last year, with a condition that most presidents could only hope for. "The funds came With the expectation that the college would know how to use this money in the appropriate way," she recalls.

A week after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast region, a first-year student told Skandera Trombley he wanted to assemble a group of Pitzer students to spend their fall break helping people in the affected areas, but he needed financial support. Because of the gift, the school was able to provide financial support to send the students to help with rebuilding efforts.

"This is why our community is so strong," Skandera Trombley says. "I have funding that's come from people who have a great deal of trust in our institutional integrity."

Skandera Trombley is known for her close connection to students and faculty at Pitzer, sharing regular meals with them in the cafeteria. "I consider myself at heart always a faculty member. I just have enormous respect for faculty, and I find our students to be incredibly inspiring, and really interesting, intelligent young people."

Family Life

It's no secret that college presidents lead demanding lives, and it's certainly not uncommon for a president to get home at 10 or 11 p.m., after a day of meetings and events that began at 5:30 a.m. Skandera Trombley tries to make the most of her day, whether it is at Pitzer or on the road on a fundraising trip or speaking engagement.

"I absolutely pack in as much as I can, so what for most people might be a three- or four-day trip, I do in two," she says. "I don't want one minute where I'm not meeting somebody or engaged in business. I try and maximize my efficiency away from home, so I can maximize the time that I'm at home."

For her it's not a question of balance but of priorities--first of which is her family. She and her husband, artist Nelson Trombley, have a 10-year-old son, named for his father but known to all as Sparkey.

"Fortunately, Pitzer is an institution that appreciates working mothers, so I don't have to try and fit into an environment that would not be as accepting. My family is very much integrated into the life of the college, so in some ways there's a kind of seamlessness that exists at present."

With more college and university presidents assuming the role at a younger age, Skandera Trombley says the work-family issue is one that they need to be very vocal about. "You need to remain a human being and a family person," she says. "I've worked for two presidents and I've seen the toll that the position can take on them. I've seen how families can sometimes be pushed to the margin, but that's not something that I want in my life."

A New Look at Twain

Between official duties and family life, most people would have a full day, but Skandera Trombley says she has a lot of energy, and "between the hours of 5 and 6 in the morning, and 10 and 11 at night" she can usually be found working on her other passion: the life of Mark Twain. She's nearly completed her third book on the author, and says the information she has uncovered is so compelling that it keeps her trudging back to the desk at 5 a.m. "I wouldn't recommend writing a biography this way, but it's the only way I can squeeze it in," she says.

Over the years, Skandera Trombley has become a leading Twain scholar, even appearing as a commentator in Ken Burns' 2002 documentary on the author. "I had all the sad parts," she jokes. "Whenever somebody died, I was on screen talking about it."

Her fascination with Twain began while she was at the University of Southern California, working toward her Ph.D. "I had fully intended to do my dissertation on the neo-platonic progression of William Wordsworth's The Prelude," she says, but a chance discovery set her on a very different path.

A professor asked her to check out a report that someone had a hundred letters supposedly written by Samuel Clemens. She traveled to Sacramento to meet with a philatelist who purchased the letters from a dealer for $50, hoping the stamps would be of value.

"The stamps were worthless and he was going to throw the letters away," Skandera Trombley says. "But his wife started to read them and said, 'I don't know who this guy is but he's funny. He tells a good story.'"

It wasn't long before they connected "S.L. Clemens" the letter writer to Mark Twain. What Skandera Trombley saw was a perspective on Clemens's life largely ignored by other biographers.

"These letters were written primarily to his daughters," she says. "I didn't even know he had daughters. I had this kind of classic American, solitary man image--for no particular reason other than that is what popular culture had given me. And here is Twain writing to his daughters saying, 'This is my best anecdote and I'm sending it to you because I know you won't lose it.' He was really treating them as intellectual equals." To date, Skandera Trombley is the only person to have read the entire collection of letters.

Intrigued by the find, she read through existing Twain biographies, and found them lacking in what she believes was a key ingredient in what shaped him as a writer and person.

"The daughters weren't really mentioned, they were just seen as totally extraneous. And when his wife was mentioned, it was either as a nullity or as someone who actually had a detrimental effect on his career," she says. "That seemed kind of odd considering that at the time Twain was the most famous man in the world. I thought this popular view doesn't really reconcile with the primary documents."

Her research showed that his wife, Olivia, who came from a well-educated, independent, and iconodastic family, shaped many of Twain's political beliefs. "My argument is you wouldn't have The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without his association with this very social reform-minded family."

Dropping Wordsworth, Skandera Trombley wrote her dissertation instead on Twain and the women in his life, culminating in the 1994 book Mark Twain in the Company of Women.

Her latest book focuses on Isabel Lyon, the controversial secretary that worked for Clemens in the last years of his life, and kept copious notes on everything he did. "A lot of questions about Twain's supposed melancholy and bitterness near the end of his life can be answered as a result of what this woman reveals."

Influences and Advisors

That Skandera Trombley had recognized the influence of women in Twain's life isn't surprising, considering her own upbringing.

"In many ways, my principle guide was the example set by my parents," she says. "My mother was an elementary school principal in Los Angeles at a time when there was just one other woman in her district. My father elected to stay in the classroom; he spent 30 years as a second-grade teacher. So seeing a woman in a position of leadership was normal, and I thought the rest of the world worked that way. It wasn't until I grew up that I learned differently."

Today, she seeks counsel and guidance from fellow presidents and administrators she has known for many years. "I'm very fortunate to have people that I can trust to be honest with me and tell me when I'm doing something wrong," she says. "I also work with a top group of administrators here at Pitzer who have been in place since I arrived. We work together in a very cooperative fashion and we trust each other and seek each other's advice."

One piece of advice they shared with her was about handling the stresses of the job.

"The one thing you learn when you become a college president is how much you worry about everything: What's the stock market going to do? What are my students going to do Friday night?" she says. "You have to learn how to manage that stress and be more comfortable with it; otherwise you can have real difficulties working in this environment. My worries are not atypical, but when I walk in the door at the end of the day, I'm home and I try to leave work where it needs to be."

The Future

Skandera Trombley initiated Pitzer's first strategic planning process when she took office in 2002, and is pleased with the progress that has been made. Applications to the school have increased by 50 percent and annual giving has increased by 20 percent. The school also achieved a record 18 Fulbright Fellowships for the 2006-07 academic year.

Several building projects are under way, designed to enhance the community and reinforce Pitzer culture and identity. One of those projects, to be completed by the spring, is the Residential Life Project being constructed in the northeast part of the campus. The RLP will include student living space, visiting faculty apartments, art and music galleries, a writing center, and the school's admissions office. It will also be the first building of its kind to achieve Gold LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

"We are going to demonstrate to the world of higher education that you can build socially responsible, LEED-certified residence halls for students, and they will be beautiful, they will be affordable, and they will be educational," Skandera Trombley says. "For our institution, which really tries to practice sustainability, it is a huge deal. And it has not proven to be of huge additional cost. There are ways that you can build green that are quite affordable."

She notes with pride that effecting positive change is not easy; and often takes much longer. 'Are we there yet? No, there are always things that you want to strive for that will make the institution stronger and allow us to afford an even better educational environment institution for our students," Skandera Trombley says. "I think we've done a great amount of work in a very short period of time. But that success only comes when everyone is working together and wants to move ahead."

VITAL STATS:

Laura Skandera Trombley

Title: President, Pitzer College, Claremont, Calif., 2002-present

Prior positions: Vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of the faculty at Coe College (Iowa)

Education: Pepperdine University (bachelor's and master's); University of Southern California (Ph.D.)

Books: Epistemology: Turning Points in the History of Poetic Knowledge (co-author) (1986) Mark Twain in the Company of Women (1994); Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston (1998); Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship (2002); Mark Twain's Other Woman (2007)

Family: Husband, Nelson Trombley, and one son

A Southern GENTLEMAN

G. David Pollick, Birmingham-Southern University

Strong leadership in a crisis pulled students, faculty, and the community together.

By Jean Marie Angelo

IT WAS 2 A.M. THIS PAST MARCH 8 WHEN THE TELEPHONE rang in a New York City hotel room. Two vice presidents were on the line telling David Pollick, president of Birmingham-Southern University (Ala.), that two BSC students were responsible for a series of nine Baptist church burnings that had scandalized the community since February. The students had confessed to the crimes as a result of a police investigation.

"I was dumbfounded. It actually took the breath out of me," says Pollick. Another administrator described the news about the fires as "a kick in the gut."

Within 20 minutes Pollick had written a statement assuring that everyone on campus would aid in rebuilding the churches. He also had travel plans in place to get back home--or, rather, his new home.

When he received the telephone call, Pollick had only been on the job at BSC for one-and-a-half years. He arrived the college, home to 1,300 students, after an eight-year presidency at Lebanon Valley College (Pa.) and a prior presidency at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was in New York City visiting foundations and alumni. The relative BSC newcomer headed back to the small liberal arts college, which was founded a decade before the Civil War began, and which still has strong ties to the United Methodist Church. He knew he was heading back to a tough situation and BSC's academic reputation, and its focus on service learning, would draw even more attention to the scandal.

Michael Atchison, a member of BSC's Board of Trustees and a senior partner in a local law firm, sums it up best: "It was inconceivable that one of our students would do something like this."

The burnings were a series of "mindless, cruel, stupid actions," says Pollick. The students involved were out hunting and drinking and got the idea to burn churches as a lark, he adds. After burning several, they went back another night to burn more in a misguided effort to possibly cover their tracks.

All presidents receive dreaded telephone calls about accidents and tragedies. Not many end up in Pollick's position--becoming part of national media coverage. Major news outlets from The New York Times to The Christian Science Monitor ran stories about the church burnings and the students allegedly involved. (In addition to the two BSC students, a student from the University of Alabama, Birmingham also was charged with the crimes.)

By midmorning Pollick was back in Birmingham reassuring an upset community and student body, and promising the affected church communities that BSC would aid them. The BSC students who confessed were banned from campus. (They are now in jail awaiting prosecution.)

Student body leaders drafted their own statement, which was, in turn, signed by other BSC students, that reaffirmed the mission and purpose of the institution. The college's values are "positive community and civic engagement, honorable morals, and global human dignity," they wrote. Those guilty of burning the churches did not reflect BSC's values, they added, while echoing Pollick's promise to help.

Keeping the Premise

While the determined promise to help rebuild was sincere, it was not going to be easy to fulfill. One church, Rehobeth Baptist Church in Bibb County, was burned to the ground. All that was left of Rehobeth were front steps and part of the foundation with the plaque that read, "established in 1819." Some other churches were not as devastated, but had sustained heavy smoke damage.

While BSC staff began working to form staff and student teams to speak with church communities and assess what was needed, Pollick established a fund, to be managed by BSC, that would be used solely to rebuild the churches. Student choirs planned benefit concerts; other student groups led fundraising activities.

Pollick and others personally delivered food to church congregations, notes Atchison. The college's involvement went a long way in proving that Pollick was serious about righting the wrongs.

"I think he handled this as best as could be," adds Atchison, who admires Pollick's strong backbone and ability to take the lead. Not every university or college takes Pollick's approach. Leadership at UA-Birmingham was far less visible in the aftermath of the church fires, observes Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges. Officials at Duke, another Southern IHE drawn into controversy this year when male athletes were accused of assaulting a woman, were criticized for not immediately addressing the situation with campus staff and the community of Durham, N.C.

Pollick took the lead at BSC and reassured that the college would do the right thing for the community, even though only a few students were guilty of the crimes. That's when more money started to come in. Pollick was amazed that the funds came in as quickly as they did: "I didn't ask anyone for one dollar." Yet, $5 and $10 checks started to arrive from all over the country. One anonymous donor from Jackson Hole, Wyo., was so impressed with Pollick's stance that he called the president's office and pledged $150,000. In all, BSC received $368,000--all of which was turned over to the churches. This money, plus insurance coverage, has allowed the church communities to begin restoration efforts.

In early October, after months of work, meetings, and fundraising efforts, the students and staff of BSC came together with 300 churchgoers, community members, and politicians for--what else?--a celebratory dinner of fried chicken, sweet potatoes, and black-eyed peas.

"It isn't that he said the right things," says Ekman, analyzing Pollick's actions. "But he acted immediately. We call this moral leadership."

From Rock Musician to Philosopher

Throughout the incident Pollick was keenly aware of the role church life plays in Southern life. He is also ever-mindful of Birmingham's place in the civil rights movement. It was the city's rich and painful history that drew him to the BSC presidency and not to some other part of the nation. "This is a city that has faced the devil head on," he says. The city's people of color faced pain, which was followed by hard won success and wisdom. The experience gives Birmingham an "authority" that many other U.S. cities do not have, he says.

No doubt his own faith life, too, informed his call for social action. Pollick is a devout Roman Catholic who once considered the priesthood, but who, instead, went on to earn several advanced degrees in philosophy.

He has come a long way from the freshman who, in 1965, was kicked out of the University of San Diego. He spent all his time socializing and no time studying, he admits.

This brief higher ed career followed a music career in which Pollick played bass for several bands in California. Not many presidents can lay claim to doing studio musician work for the Righteous Brothers, Dionne Warwick, and the Beach Boys. Then again, not many have received the type of letter he received later from USD, which basically said, "We don't want to see the sun rise on you again on this campus," he recalls.

"It was not unlike some of the letters I have to write now," notes Pollick.

As many young people who were not enrolled in college did during the 1960s, Pollick ended up serving in the military. He was part of a Marine flotilla off the West Coast during the Vietnam era, an experience that shaped him like nothing else until that point. "World War II and Korea were my father's wars. Vietnam was my war. I saw our ability politically and militarily to be so incredibly irresponsible," he says. It wasn't just the lives that were lost that shook him; it was also having personal connections to some of those who didn't come back from the war.

After the service, a chastened Pollick went back to USD and "begged" for readmission. They took him in, starting him on the road to becoming a serious student and scholar. He even taught at USD for a period of time--an experience Pollick describes as "rather sweet." In fact, John Swanke, a Ph.D. and philosopher at USD, became one of his mentors, helping him to grow as a student and leader.

The Center for Global Human Dignity

In some ways the church fires allowed Pollick to stress the importance of one his BSC initiatives--the Center for Global Human Dignity. Pollick's vision is to create a center that can educate the campus community about the root economic and political reasons that prevent people in places around the globe from living dignified, lives. Speakers, service programs, scholars in residence, and international travel will all play a part of the new center, says Pollick.

The center was well on its way to becoming a reality before the fires, but the increased attention on BSC and social justice has helped bring the project along. It will be opening in early 2007.

He notes that BSC has a higher percentage of students engaged in service learning. More than 70 percent traveled to areas affected by the tsunami along the rim of the Indian Ocean in 2004; many went to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. "Our students have to he able to speak across international borders and cultures," he says. For these reasons Pollick is committed to expanding BSC. He wants to eventually grow enrollment to 1,800 and will soon bring BSC from a Division I to a Division III institution, thus allowing the college to have a football team for the first time since the 1930s. He's taken heat for the move but believes it's the right thing to do.

VITAL STATS:

G. David Pollick

Position: President Birmingham-Southern College (Ala.), 2004-present

Prior Positions: President of Lebanon Valley College (Pa.), where he raised the academic profile, enrollment and improved campus facilities; president of the Art Institute of Chicago and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; vice president for Academic Affairs at the State University of New York at Cortland. He has held academic and administrative positions at Seattle University (Wash.), Saint John's University(N.Y.), and College of Saint Benedict (Minn.)

Degrees: Bachelor's degree, University of San Diego; master's degree in philosophy, University of Ottawa, Canada; Ph.D. in philosophy from Saint Paul University, Ottawa; Ph.D. in philosophy from University of Ottawa

Family: Married to Karen Bentley Pollick, a concert musician and conductor who plays the violin, viola, and several other instruments. While she has played and recorded with such esteemed artists as the Bolshoi Ballet and Mikhail Baryshnikov, it is her recording work with the Dave Matthews Band that really gets the students' attention. "They get all wrapped up in that " says a proud Pollick.