(Top down, left to right): President Frances Lucas-Tauchar and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher answer questions from the press before Lady Thatcher’s Millsaps Nova Series address on September 20, 2000. • Governor Ronnie Musgrove and President Lucas-Tauchar enjoy a quick chat at a Nova Series reception for Lady Thatcher. • National Book Award winner Ellen Gilchrist and President Lucas-Tauchar pose together before Gilchrist is presented with the Alumna of the Year Award on February 15, 2001.

I think the two new pipelines for presidencies are people coming out of the development area and the student development area. College boards are often looking for people who can build community and raise money. When search committees can find a top scholar who also specializes in organizing people, then that’s usually the person who gets the job. But there are many fund-raising and student development leaders who have the skills that are much more natural for what a president actually has to do all day.

In the last two decades, the competition for students has become quite keen, so being able to talk comfortably with students and to attract them to your college is a very powerful and important skill to have. Obviously, people who have specialized in student development know how to do that.

Also, the president is often the spokesperson for the college and has to be able to articulate the college to the exterior environment much more so now than in the past. So it’s important for the president to be able to communicate with alumni and business people in the community. And people with student development and fund-raising backgrounds are usually superb communicators. So I believe those two new pipelines to the presidency will continue to grow in higher education.

In a recent survey, presidents at private institutions stated that they spend the bulk of their time addressing fund-raising, planning, budget, and personnel issues. On the list of 11 priorities, “student issues” ranked eight, and “academic matters” ranked sixth. However, you have stressed a “student-centered” approach in your presidency.

Having met numerous presidents, those answers don’t surprise me. But the first place I am spending my time is working to recruit students. Certainly as I grow in my presidency I will spend a lot of time on fund-raising, but right now recruiting students and building community are my two biggest priorities.

I define community very broadly. Community means developing relationships with the trustees, alumni, friends of the College, as well as with the students and faculty. We have a great community at Millsaps, and I am focused on recruiting the brightest and best people to join our intellectual circle.

Whereas some might say we need to focus on fund-raising, you are always careful to say we first need to focus on friend-raising.

Before we can ask people for money, we have to know who they are and what is important to them. The friends of Millsaps College are people who share a common interest in our mission. They don’t just hand us resources. First, we must develop a meaningful relationship with them. They need something from us, also. They need a cause in life in which to invest their resources that will go well beyond their own life. I view it as a relationship-building process where we create a mutual and healthy exchange between the College and our friends.

Though your father was a university president, you state that many other educators mentored you and helped you to achieve the presidency. Can you speak about the importance of having mentors?

I was certainly very fortunate to have a mentor in my immediate family, but there were many, many other mentors along the way – people who took chances on me. Take, for example, my selection as Vice President for Student Affairs at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. Neal Malicky, the president of Baldwin-Wallace, hired a 29-year-old woman from Mississippi whom no one in the state of Ohio knew. He took an enormous risk. And not only did he take that risk and hire me, but then he spent six years carefully mentoring me each and every day, telling me all along the way that I would be a president one day and would need to have certain skills. So I paid close attention to everything from how to shape invitation lists for important events to the way he spoke with and called each custodian by name.

And when I was an undergraduate at Mississippi State, Gale Rhodes in Student Affairs saw something in me my sophomore year and pulled me into a student leadership position, and she has mentored me literally to this day. Like so many students, I got involved in college life outside the classroom because somebody saw potential in me and taught me I could contribute.

Your undergraduate mentoring happened at a public university, but I would presume that one of the advantages of a small college is that the opportunities for such interactions are more common.

At a national liberal arts college, there are many more opportunities for faculty-student or professional-student interaction. I was at a large university, and thankfully I connected with somebody special. But there are many more opportunities to find a mentor, or several mentors, at a smallliberal arts college.

I cannot overstate the fact that one’s education should never be limited to what happens in the classroom alone.

We stress community at Millsaps because college is so much more than just facts and figures; it is about finding your place in the world. It is about personal growth, about serving others.

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Millsaps Magazine  |  Millsaps | Last Edited April 23, 2001