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| Susquehanna University President L. Jay Lemons and his family move into Pine Lawn, the University president's residence. |
L. Jay Lemons joined the Susquehanna community as the University's 14th president on Feb. 1 following more than eight years as chancellor of the University of Virginia at Wise, a public liberal arts college with 1,500 students, 225 employees, and an $18 million budget in southwestern Virginia. Lemons; his wife, Marsha Schone Lemons; and four children, Olivia, age 8; Maggie, age 6; Thomas, age 3; and Meredith, age 1; took up residence in Pine Lawn, the Susquehanna president's home, on January 15.
by Gwenn Wells
Ask students at UVa-Wise what they recall about Jay Lemons and you're likely to get three answers.
The way he remembers your name.
His lunches -- every student on campus gets invited at least once. For those who accept, the conversation invariably comes around to three questions: Why did you come here? What do you like about the school? And, if you could change one thing about this campus, what would it be?
And then, of course, there's the magic wand.
Liberated from his daughter Maggie's fourth birthday party and ever-so slightly bedraggled, it is the perfect visual aid to pass around the room during the "If" question.
"A lot of the things students request do actually happen," says M.J. Dixon, student government association president and senior business administration major. "Students are included in some capacity in everything that this college does," says Dixon. "Our voice is really heard and it's a wonderful opportunity."
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| President Lemons greets Rachel Knight '01. |
Accomplishments at Wise
As one of the youngest college chief administrators in Virginia, Lemons led the University of Virginia's only branch campus to redefine the institution's mission and strategic objectives. Under his watch, the college invested $40 million in capital improvements and raised nearly $20 million against a $12 million goal in its first capital campaign. He worked with faculty to implement a selective admissions policy, created a comprehensive student life program and worked with the state's governor and legislature to increase faculty salaries more than 40 percent in a four-year period. Lemons also has played a key role in recruiting new faculty and building a faculty support system, including the addition of a sabbatical program, says George Culbertson, provost and senior vice chancellor who is serving as interim chancellor at UVa-Wise.
"A tough act to follow," says an editorial in the Bristol, Va., Herald Courier that cites Lemons as "a leader, an inspiration and a catalyst" in the process that led U.S. News & World Report to rank UVa-Wise as the number-two public liberal arts college in the South in 1999 and again in 2000.
The school has also come a long way from its beginnings in 1954 as Clinch Valley College in buildings that once housed the county poor farm. Lemons, a gifted storyteller, frequently shares the thumbnail history. And whether you get the three-minute version or the 30-minute version, you will hear firsthand a tale of extraordinary determination to put a four-year education within the financial and geographic reach of residents in the Central Appalachian Mountains.
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| President Lemons outside Seibert Hall. |
Nebraska Native
A native of Scottsbluff, Neb., Lemons is the son of two educators. As a student at Nebraska Wesleyan, he earned a B.S. in physical education and health education, both with teacher certification, coupled with a B.A. in philosophy. The latter came during the fifth year he spent at the university to compete in varsity track while serving as a full-time employee in student affairs.
He followed up with a master's in education from the University of Nebraska with concentrations in educational psychology and college student development and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in higher education and management through the Darden Graduate School of Business.
He gained experience as a hall director at Nebraska Wesleyan; graduate assistant to the director of admissions at the University of Nebraska, area coordinator at Texas A&M University, graduate assistant to the dean of the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, and an intern at the Curry School Foundation. Then came a three-year term in Charlottesville as assistant to University of Virginia former President Robert M. O'Neil and current President John T. Casteen III.
The assignment and subsequent appointment to UVa-Wise as chancellor provided Lemons with a "crash course in the issues that currently confront colleges and universities," says Casteen. "He has seen recession and recovery, the process by which major capital funds campaigns begin and reach maturity, a series of developments with regard to faculty self-governance, various crises involving student behavior and relations between students and faculty, and the means to manage a program of ongoing institutional improvement at the College in Wise."
In both Charlottesville and Wise, adds Casteen, Lemons has emerged "as a friend and champion of faculty interests and has also brought students and faculty closer together than they might have been otherwise."
Painting His Way Through College
Lemons, who describes his upbringing as "rich in all kinds of ways, but of modest means," learned first hand about financial aid and creative college financing when he selected Nebraska Wesleyan, the most expensive institution in the state. "I painted my way through college," he recalls. "During the summer after I graduated from high school, my mother and I worked side by side, probably 60 to 80 hours a week."
At 41-years-old, he is still paying off student loans. "I look forward to retiring that debt, but there's no question that I will never make a more personal investment than those student loans," he says. "For me, at age 18, to sign those promissory notes was a pretty powerful thing to do. I can absolutely, in clear conscience, say that it delivered me to class on some Friday afternoons when I may not otherwise have been inclined to participate, and that friends of mine chose to make optional."
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A Teacher First and Foremost
From the perspective of both a student and an administrator, he has gathered broad experience at both public and private institutions, large and small and in areas including admissions, development, senior administration, and especially student life. And that student-centered perspective provides Lemons with a background well-suited to a college presidency, says Rick Artman, one of Lemons' earliest student life mentors who is currently president of Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. "Our loyalty wasn't to a discipline, it was to an idea and concept toward the development of the whole student."
"I truly think of myself as a teacher first and foremost," stresses Lemons, who attributes much of the success at Wise to his administration's shared values and trust with faculty in their roles as teachers, scholars and advisors. "While we live in a world of constant change, there are important aspects of the institutional soul that must constantly be nurtured, protected, and celebrated," says Lemons. "Faculty members have become the 'keepers' of the flame for the institutional soul."
"Some of my most important experiences were those found in my own undergraduate education at a private liberal arts college," says Lemons. "Frankly much of the fun that I had at UVa.- Wise was making available for our students the educational experiences most often found in private liberal arts colleges but at a public institution."
A Student of Higher Education
A student of higher education, Lemons literally has trouble driving past another campus without stopping to take a look around. He is, in fact, so enamored of academe that he created two courses on the theme. The Academic Novel, a collaboration with a faculty colleague, focuses on fiction and non-fiction writing with higher education as the setting. The Academic Life is a primer in higher education, created partly to encourage students to consider academic careers. "One of the things that I fundamentally see as part of our role is putting a little air under students' wings," says Lemons. And he has seen success with students like Laura Faye Mullins, a recent Wise graduate who began graduate school in education and law at the University of Tennessee this winter. "He challenges you to be the best person that you can be," she says.
Intellect without Pretense
Lemons is a voracious reader whose taste in books ranges from the full gambit of C.S. Lewis to William Bennett's The Book of Virtues. "He loves an intellectual discourse," says UVa.-Wise Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Gary Juhan.
This is also a man who once named his fantasy basketball team The Jeffersonians and yet, who is well known for his lack of pretention. He regularly joined the freshman leadership experience for an off-campus retreat designed to help new students connect with the school and each other. And incoming students who have known him to take an impromptu swim in a cold mountain stream are not surprised to see him volunteer for the wet end of the dunking booth at campus events.
He is also not above a practical joke -- even at his own expense -- or donning a costume to play a Santa's elf nicknamed "Wahoo" distributing Christmas gifts to staff members.
Leadership style
"Jay has been so valuable to this college because of the relationship he developed and maintained with faculty. He has served as a leader who truly values each of us - personally and professionally," says Shelia Schmuck, chair of the UVa-Wise faculty senate. "He believes firmly in shared governance, and has always included faculty in decision-making processes -- academic and otherwise. We did not always agree - but we always shared mutual respect."
Gary Juhan describes Lemons as "extremely in tune to the academic process," and a good example of "grace under pressure" -- the latter demonstrated amply during the controversial 1999 name change from Clinch Valley College to the University of Virginia at Wise. Even at a point when it appeared the effort might fail, faculty and staff welcomed Lemons and then-provost and senior vice president George Culbertson at a progress meeting with a standing ovation.
"He's always willing to talk through things," says Juhan. "I don't have any idea what kind of campus culture you have or what kind of environment," he adds. "But I'll guarantee you that in a year it will be better."
"His whole experience has come out of an ethic of care and concern and strong people skills," says Siena Heights University President Rick Artman. "You should feel very blessed that he waited for the right opportunity."
Fund-Raising and Friend-Raising
At 6-feet-4-inches tall, Jay Lemons towers over most people, yet he has a way of putting folks at ease -- from a young guest who accidently fell in the mud at a recent UVa-Wise sports hall of fame induction to 97-year-old Leila Maude Richmond, number one football fan who, with her two sisters, provided funds for the college's first endowed professorship.
It's even evident when he meets alumni who graduated long before Lemons arrived in 1992. At a recent reunion of classes from the 50s, "by the time he had his first meeting with them, you could just see they were feeling closer ties to campus," says Dawn Gilbert, president of the UVa.-Wise alumni association. "He's one of our best cheerleaders."
A Community Resource
The good will has flowed beyond the campus. Lemons has built UVa.- Wise into a resource for the entire region with projects including the launch of WISE-FM, the first public radio station in southwest Virginia, and providing a campus home for a regional office for Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology. Both Jay and Marsha Lemons have also found time to support community projects such as a new, volunteer-built playground.
The community, in return, has reacted with "genuine love" for the chancellor and his family. More than a few tears greeted the announcement that they would leave in January for Susquehanna. The reactions have ranged from a local service club roadway sign proclaiming, "We Love Jay Lemons," to spontaneous recognitions at events such as a Wise production of A Christmas Carol.
"They're good, community-minded people," stresses Joseph Smiddy, UVa-Wise president emeritus. "They just blend right in."
Role Reversal Benefits
The couple has been leapfrogging academic studies and careers in pursuit of graduate degrees since they met at Nebraska Wesleyan. "We have reversed roles on a lot of different occasions in terms of what we've been up to professionally," says Jay Lemons. "What it means for me at this point is a wonderful friend and an astute professional person who I can consult with on a daily basis."
A native of Omaha, Neb., Marsha Lemons earned a B.S. in 1984 from Nebraska Wesleyan University, and an M.Ed. in educational administration from Texas A&M University, where she worked as senior advisor in the student programs office. In 1990 University of Virginia President John Casteen and his wife hired Marsha to manage their household and plan events -- a formidable task for an office where a typical academic year includes 140 events --sometimes two and three a day. Later, she put the experience to work at U Va.-Wise where the chancellor's duties included frequent entertaining from small dinner parties to major events hosted at their home.
As a governor-appointed member of the Virginia State Commission for the Arts, Marsha Lemons helped to allocate funds appropriated by the legislature. She was also a member of Wise organizations including the Pro-Art board of directors, the UVa-Wise Wesley Foundation Board, and the Hospice Advisory Committee. She has also been treasurer of the local chapter of the American Association of University Women and a member of the Trinity United Methodist Church of Wise Administrative Council.
While at Wise, the busy family tried to break away about once a month or on holidays to a private, vacation retreat in North Carolina, recently sold in anticipation of their move to Pennsylvania. "We love to be outdoors, love to hike. We all love to read," says Marsha Lemons. "Our life is so intense that usually when we go away there isn't a lot of time for hobbies," she says. "We just try to be together whatever we're doing."
Why Susquehanna, Why Now
Originally billed as a "short-term assignment," the nine years Jay Lemons spent at U.Va-Wise have included much time on the road, particularly meeting with the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors in Charlottesville. He has also been astute at lobbying for Wise interests at the state legislature in Richmond -- 375 miles from Wise with no easy way to get there. "More often than not, you have a whole new slate of folks every four years," explains Lemons. "I will not miss the amount of time that I have had to spend, if you will, dancing with the bureaucracy."
Though he had been invited to become a presidential candidate by several larger institutions, he finds in Susquehanna what he has been looking for: a small university environment and a strong commitment to liberal arts education. "Bound up in that is really a judgment about what is important to me," says Lemons. "And that is to be in the sort of place where you can get to know your colleagues and students and know them well, a place with a coherent educational philosophy, and a commitment to student life and having the highest quality student experience possible."
"What I really want out of life is meaningful work, the sense that my work is making a difference, and every now and then a sense of appreciation for the efforts."
