Indiana Ag Connection - College President Full of Freshman Jitters

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College President Full of Freshman Jitters
Indiana Ag Connection - 08/26/2016

Jan Cervelli is flushed with the all of same emotions as the other 462 freshmen moving onto McCandless Hall for the start of the fall semester.

"I'm excited," said Cervelli, one of the class of 2020 getting settled in at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Ind.

"I think I share many of the feelings of being a freshman. I'm excited, I'm confident. I know I am in a great institution, but at the same time, I am scared of the challenge. But that's a good feeling. That adrenaline flow is exciting."

There is one main difference between Cervelli, BS'79, and the other incoming freshmen. Cervelli is the president of the college.

"I figure that I am a freshman, too," said Cervelli. "I intend to stay in the dorms and see what it is like to live on campus. I want to know, completely, what it is like to be a student here. And I want everyone in the class of 2020 to graduate and say that they knew the president of this institution. I think it is really important to have those kind of connections."

She plans to spend a night in each residence hall to better understand student life on Saint Mary's campus.

She finished the spring semester as the dean of the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona, then loaded her car and spent three days on the road moving back to Indiana.

Since officially becoming the president of the small (around 1,600 undergraduate and graduate students) women's liberal arts school on June 1st, Cervelli has maintained a non-stop schedule preparing for her first semester.

During her first week at Saint Mary's, she embarked on a campus tour she has yet to find the time to complete.

"My intention is to go through every hallway of every building on campus. When I do this I run into people in a wonderfully unexpected way. It is these encounters and those conversations with everyone that help develop relationships. Higher education is about developing relationships," Cervelli said, "common understandings and common goals. I see this as the beginning of the strategic discussion to help determine where we are going."

She spent a week at Boston College at a gathering of administrators from American Catholic colleges and followed that up with a week at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, participating in a week-long seminar with other newly appointed college presidents.

Cervelli is a distinguished alumni of the Purdue University College of Agriculture. Photo provided "It was like a presidential boot camp," Cervelli said. "From 7:30 am to 10 pm each night, we covered all the major subjects, strategic planning, student enrollment...fund-raising. You name it, we discussed it."

But that wasn't Cervelli's first look behind the curtain at how college presidents operate.

In 1999, as the associate dean for undergraduate studies and president of the university senate at the University of Kentucky, Cervelli was named a fellow of the American Council of Education.

For a year, she job shadowed presidents William Kirwan (Ohio State) and Robert Glidden (Ohio University).

"They took me everywhere," Cervelli said. "After every meeting, they would share their thoughts with me. I saw the good and the bad, all of what it takes to run a university."

And when her year was over, she tucked all that information away to become the first female dean at Clemson University.

Then came an eight-year stint at the University of Arizona, where Cervelli served as dean of the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.

"Dean is a great position," Cervelli said. "You get to connect with students and you are able to begin new academic programs. You can see the difference you make."

It wasn't until last summer, when she returned to South Bend for her high school reunion, that Cervelli began to consider the possibility of becoming a college president.

"One of my friends said "you know, they're looking for a new president of Saint Mary's College. Would you be interested?""

She loved the American Southwest. In eight years, her roots had stretched deep into the desert sand. She had become a person of influence in Tucson, putting her landscape architecture and urban design skills to use to help revitalize the city's downtown. Arizona was her school and Tucson was her home, now.

But South Bend was always where she grew up. There was the undeniable pull to return. Cervelli was born in South Bend and grew up in a Catholic family right across the Saint Joseph's River from Saint Mary's and its 100-acre campus. Their home on Riverside Drive was so close she could hear the daily peal of the church bells from her bedroom.

She attended Holy Cross School, then Saint Joseph's High School. Her sister graduated from Saint Mary's. Maybe Jan would have been a Saint Mary's Belle, too, had she not wanted to become a landscape architect and, instead, headed to Purdue.

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