The Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission program is a yearlong program designed for senior leaders at CIC member institutions—and their spouses and partners—to explore their vocational calling to serve as a college or university president, as well as examine what types of institutional missions they might best serve, through seminars, small group discussions, individual consultations, and extensive reading.
The 2022-2023 programming closed with a Winter Seminar in February in Atlanta, Georgia, that featured Ronald Crutcher, president emeritus of the University of Richmond. Using insights from his book I Had No Idea You Were Black and a visual exercise regarding lenses and leadership, Crutcher spoke to participants about his life journey, elaborating on how his experiences contributed to the lenses of his worldview and how these different perspectives were helpful to recognize during his presidency.
Programming focused participants’ journeys to follow their calling to leadership and incorporated excerpts from resources such as Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be by Mark R. Schwehn and Dorothy C. Bass, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco, and Sacred Ground by Eboo Patel.
The Winter Seminar closes out Frederik Ohles’ influential role as director of the Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission program. Ohles is president emeritus of Nebraska Wesleyan University and has worked on the program as a senior advisor since 2015. The upcoming Summer Seminar in July will be the start of the 2023-2024 Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission program under the new leadership of Steve Bahls, president emeritus of Augustana College.
