Leaders:  Are they born or are they made? 

 

It’s an old question, and there probably will never be a conclusive answer.  It can be argued either way.  Some people seem destined for leadership; the signs are all there from early childhood. In other people, leadership obviously develops as one’s life unfolds.  

 

Perhaps we will always question how leaders develop, but there is no question at all about what a powerful difference a leader can make. Whether it’s a business, a government, a church or a community, the ability of individual leaders to lift and transform the people around them is enormous. 

 

Perhaps nowhere does leadership make a greater impact than in higher education.  Colleges and universities rise or fall based largely on the gifts and energy of a single individual who leads them. 

 

I have known lots of college presidents in my time. During my five decades in college life, I have seen them all — the winners, the losers and the "in betweeners." All kinds of men and women, leading all kinds of institutions. 

 

During just the last year, I have visited in the offices of the president at Harvard University, and likewise at a small Bible college in Quito, Ecuador. One is the most famous university in the world, and the other, a school of barely a hundred students in a developing country. But the sign on the door is the same: in both places:  Office of the President. 

 

Believe it or not, these two presidents, and all the others in between, share, in some respects, similar challenges. 

 

In colleges, to an extreme degree, presidential leadership matters. Here in our community, at Cleveland State Community College, we are seeing more evidence of what a difference a highly effective leader can make. Dr. Bill Seymour came to CSCC seven years ago, in 2014, and in that time has brought an energy and freshness to the school which is impossible to miss. 

 

Cleveland State has had other successful leaders in its 50-year history. I have lived in Cleveland all that time and have watched closely as presidents have come and gone. 

 

Some of us still remember the presidency of Dr. David F. Adkisson who served for CSCC’s first 11 years, and for whom the street running through the campus is named. More recently, Dr. Carl Hite served 17 years, and became a respected and skilled leader, not just on campus but throughout the community. 

 

But Bill Seymour has taken it up a notch. He is a native of a small town in upstate New York whose father was a junior-high teacher and principal, and who counts other teachers within his family. He started his professional life in Missouri where he earned masters and doctoral degrees, and met his wife, Catherine.   

 

Interestingly, although Seymour has been highly successful as the leader of a community college, most of his career prior to CSCC was in independent colleges; first in Texas and Delaware, then finding his stride at nearby Maryville College, where he served in two vice presidencies, over more than 10 years, and “grew up professionally," as he describes it.  

 

It was at Maryville that he made the transition from the student affairs side of collegiate life — where he had always worked — into a strategic planning role, working directly with President Gerald Gibson, whom he remembers fondly as his mentor.  During those later years at Maryville, Seymour says, he first began to think, “Maybe I could be a college president.” 

 

That growing appetite for a presidential role led him to Lambuth, a small, struggling Methodist college in Jackson, Tennessee. When Lambuth merged with the University of Memphis, Seymour stayed in town for his first assignment in Tennessee’s community-college system, a vice-presidency at Jackson State Community College. It was a natural step, then, when he and  Catherine moved back across the state to accept the presidency of Cleveland State when the Board of Regents offered him that job two years later. 

 

Seymour’s track record at CSCC has been remarkable. He has brought aspirations, new programs and a sharp awareness of the unique role a two-year state college can play in a community. He recognizes that different institutions in a community have different “lanes," and that each player — UTC, Lee University and Cleveland State — can best flourish by finding that lane and filling it with excellence. 

 

Seymour, who has spent time in big state universities and private four-year schools, has brought the lessons he learned all those places into play, to make Cleveland State a better community college than it has ever been before. All of us live in a richer, stronger community as a result of his vision for Cleveland State, and his philosophy of excellence on that campus.   

 

That kind of leadership — whether it was born or made — is Bill Seymour’s gift, not just to CSCC, but far beyond his campus to our entire community.