Every year during LaGrange College’s First Week, I have the opportunity to introduce the school’s president to the freshmen. I tell the new students that when I arrived on the Hill way, way back in 1992, I had the opportunity to work for a good college. Now, nearly two decades later, I tell them, I have the honor of working for a great college.

I attribute that climb up the superlative ladder to the leadership and vision of the man I get to introduce, the college’s current - and soon to be departing - president, Dr. Stuart Gulley.

He arrived some 13 years ago, taking the reins in July of 1996; he was 36 years old. Under his steadfast hand, the college has blossomed. Bear with me a couple minutes while I catalog just a few things his leadership and vision have wrought:

We recreated the curriculum, forming a field of study that focuses on the interrelatedness of our courses, the interrelatedness of the world.

We made service a cornerstone, instilling in every student a sense that they are obligated to do unto others.

We implemented Honor and Social Codes, simple documents that reinvigorated integrity, that have instilled in most students a sense of betterment.

We built two apartment-style residence halls, a baseball field, and a magnificent, university-like library. Virtually every building on campus has undergone some form of impressive renovation. And we’re currently building a really cool pedestrian bridge!

We created the Jan Term, a period of study that has sent our students all over the world, ambassadors of what this little college does well.

All of these - and so much more - stem from President Gulley’s desire to challenge the mind and inspire the souls of every student, every faculty and staff, even the very community that nestles this little postage stamp of learning.

I knew he was a different sort of president when he handed over the search for the Vice President of Academic Affairs to the faculty. In the groves of academia, where presidents personally recruit strong-arms as their right-hand veeps, this is virtually unheard of.

He continued defying expectations and tradition: challenging the College’s tenure policy so that it made tenure available to more faculty; creating an evaluation system that encouraged not only good teaching but also research and service; giving decent raises in tough and tougher times.

What will remain - long after the buildings have begun to fall again into disrepair, long after students have graduated and faculty have gone to wherever retired faculty go, long after this little college has weathered a dozen more trials and adventures – what will remain is the memory of President Gulley’s personal touch. A moral leader, he led as someone who genuinely cared, and, in the process, he gave every one of us a story to relay. For example:

His tradition of calling faculty and staff on their birthdays, in that 5-minute conversation making us feel as though we were an indispensible cog in the college’s machinery.

Or how he appears every freshman move-in day to help tote and haul as the freshmen settle into their dorms. (And it never fails that I meet President Gulley in some dormitory stairwell on this day every year, him with arms wrapped round a refrigerator or some other ridiculously heavy object, me with my couch pillows and perhaps a box of feathers.)

Or how he once had the flag lowered to half mast when a dorm mother - someone who had not worked on campus in years - had passed away, how deeply that simple gesture touched her family.

That is this man’s magic: He makes every one of us believe that we matter - to this place, to him. He has made the presidency a personal office, a vessel of all that is good and right about this place.

In a couple months, the College and community will gather to dedicate the new pedestrian bridge, naming it in honor of President and Mrs. Stuart Gulley. It is an apt metaphor for all that this man, this embodiment of the servant-leader, has done for this College, its family, the way that he has held fiercely to our past, our traditions, the way that he has led us into a shining future. He has been our bridge.

And so, 13 years later, we find ourselves forced to bid Stuart and his family a fond adieu. And as much as we hate to see him go, as much as we hoped he’d stay forever, we can let him go knowing that the College will always hold a little piece of President Gulley: his vision, his heart, his great good wishes for this little place he metamorphosed from good to great.

Farewell, Stuart, our friend, our mentor, our president. Go in peace - and rest assured that our minds have been challenged, our souls have been inspired.