Charge to the President Delivered by Walter Harrison at the Inauguration of Donna Randall April 18, 2008

When Donna asked me in an e-mail to deliver the charge to the president, she did so with her usual directness and sense of humor. “You tried to tell me what to do for seven years. Now you get another chance.”

My first thought was obvious. “And for seven years you paid absolutely no attention to the advice I gave you. Why on earth would you begin to listen now?”

As you know, Donna and I worked together at the University of Hartford as provost and president. If you are a careful reader of the Albion College magazine, you know that I said when she was appointed president of Albion that she was the world’s greatest provost and I was sure she would soon become the world’s greatest president. She has been here for ten months now, and I am sure you are discovering that I was right. You’ve made a brilliant choice.

In this audience I see a number of Donna’s friends from the University of Hartford, and they will tell you that for seven years I was an absolutely brilliant straight man for her. On every conceivable occasion, she would make fun of me. She could leave them rolling in the aisles at my expense.

Now, those of you who are not from Hartford may ask: What is there about you to make fun of? You look like a normal human being, no better and no worse than the next person.

Well, as best I could tell, there were two things. First, I am an English professor. That seemed to be about it. The punch lines were all variants on: “Well, what do you expect from an English professor?” I wonder how that will play here. I expect there are some English professors in the audience. I ask you: do you find that funny?

My second fault: I was a president! Uh oh, Donna. Can’t use that one any more! Justice is sweet.

Aside from her humor, Donna was distinctively well suited to be the provost of our university. We are a university of 7,300 students with a strong liberal arts core surrounded by a set of professional schools in the visual and performing arts, education, health professions, engineering and business. As a woman with a doctorate in sociology and an MBA and career as a business professor and dean, Donna brought a sensibility that combined an understanding of both liberal and professional learning.

As a result of that and her array of mental abilities that combine superb analytical skills, a matchless skill in how to listen well, and a charismatic personality, Donna was able to unite a campus that had been intellectually segregated and distrustful. She molded the deans of our seven schools and colleges into a great working team, and unlike any other provost I have known, was able to earn the trust and support of both the administration and the faculty. She was able to lead our university to become what it had always promised to be—the best of both worlds: an institution that combined the intimacy of a liberal arts college with the creativity and intellectual excitement of a university.

My sense is that the Albion search committee saw the same combination of background and skills in choosing Donna to be your president. Albion is, I believe, a leader in combining a strong tradition in the liberal arts with its six institutes in preparing students for a successful career, a strong sense of what it means to be a citizen in a democracy, and a fulfilling personal life. Donna, in her own distinctive way, both symbolizes that combination and lends a strong and clear mind and voice in providing leadership for Albion among liberal arts colleges and throughout higher education.

Combine that with your focus on students first and your dedication to preparing students for life in a global context, and you have found exactly the right leader in Donna Randall.

So, what is my charge to Donna? What advice to give her? Just this: use the same amazing array of skills and your distinctive sensibility to provide the leadership to Albion that you did to Hartford.

Of course, she is going to have to do that without me around as a straight man. Is there another English professor in the audience who will volunteer to take my place as the butt of her jokes? If so, see me after the inauguration. I’ll bequeath you my suit of armor.