President Howard’s Story
by: Matt MacFarland ‘11Dr. Howard finds an intellectual and fraternal village at Sydney
Christopher B. Howard, the 24th president of the College, walks into his office with the customary easy confidence that never seems far from his person. The shelves and furniture of the office are stocked full with books and photographs; some are of his family and friends and some recount his own exceptional life. His coffee is brought into the office, and though it is 2:30 in the afternoon, it is not difficult to understand why he would need the energy—the busy tour schedule that has consumed much of his time is not yet completed, and characteristic of the first month of any incoming president, his meeting schedule is exhaustive.
Yet despite his many commitments and the heavy load of administrative work to be done in the wake of his appointment, Dr. Howard’s mind seems occupied not with the tangible details of running a college but rather the abstract philosophy behind it and the health of the Hampden-Sydney spirit.
Dr. Howard believes the college has entered a “hunker down” period in the wake of the struggling economy in which we need simply to “maintain the mission” of the college. Hampden-Sydney, the president argues, now more than ever needs to stick to its fundamental ideological pillars and wait for the storm to pass. “The college itself is in good shape,” Dr. Howard said in an interview, and his short-term goal for the school is to ensure it makes it out of this recession with its financial integrity intact.
On a grander scale, and with a longer time period in mind, Dr. Howard wants to instill a sense of individual and collective responsibility in the H-SC community, particularly within the student body. Every member of the community needs to “play their part and ensure that their maximum effort” is put into maintaining the college. These are steps which “don’t require funding,” steps which require a resurgence in student involvement and ideological constancy.
By fostering this mindset and vision of unity on the campus, Dr. Howard hopes to preserve the college’s intangible foundations, those ideals of honor and fraternity, which make Hampden-Sydney what Howard believes to be “a national treasure, with a regional foundation and a global outlook.” Dr. Howard arrived at this unique institution after spending time in the corporate world following his return from active duty in Afghanistan in 2003 and after serving as the Vice President for Leadership & Strategic Initiatives at the University of Oklahoma.
Hampden-Sydney’s traditions and characteristics attracted Dr. Howard to the school in the first place: “[Hampden-Sydney] has a real mission, it’s in the south, and places sports and the idea of creating a group of closely connected men—teammates—high on its list of priorities.” Dr. Howard’s sons attended an all-boys school before the family moved to Virginia; at that school, he saw his sons “stretched in a way a co-ed institution wouldn’t have, both academically and in their development as young men.”
Moreover, the college’s sense of academic inclusion and quiet intelligence reminded Howard of the Air Force Academy, where he graduated with a BS in political science: “What I enjoyed most were those intelligent, intimate places.”
In a way, then, aspects of Hampden-Sydney are nothing new to Howard. He understands the concept of educating students in a more fulfilling way—“If we’re interested in educating a full man, it shouldn’t only be in the classroom.”
Dr. Howard’s own undergraduate experience speaks to this understanding. While a student at the Air Force Academy, Howard made himself into the ideal student-athlete, culminating his career with receiving the Campbell Award, the highest academic award in the country awarded to a senior football player. Following up on his undergraduate successes, he studied at St. Anne’s College in Oxford, England as a Rhodes Scholar.
During this time abroad and over the course of his career, Howard established a network of friends, professors, and contacts that he calls on for advice as the situation calls for it. “You have to develop your own board of directors,” Howard believes. To this existing group of advisors Dr. Howard has found the counsel of former Hampden-Sydney presidents Wilson, Bunting, and Bortz, along with the present faculty members themselves, indispensable.
It is the students themselves, however, that President Howard wants to engage. By closing the gap between the responsibilities and events put on by the Dean of Faculty and Dean of Students, Howard wants to tighten the threads of the college’s community and strengthen part of what makes Hampden-Sydney exceptional.
Many parents and prospective students, however, find another exceptional characteristic of the Hampden-Sydney education—its price tag. On the road, fielding questions at parent information sessions, Dr. Howard is most often asked how families can afford the rising cost of a college education, particularly that of a private college like Hampden-Sydney. As in the past, however, Hampden-Sydney continues to offer extensive financial aid opportunities for its students—for the 2009-2010 academic year alone, over $26 million in financial aid was given.
What students receive for that investment is an unmatched education. Dr. Howard wants to stress this quality of education above all other positives attached to Hampden-Sydney: “people feel good about the worth of the sheepskin,” and it’s this worth that Howard believes will continue to aid graduating students as they enter a tough job market.
There is another facet to Dr. Howard’s presidency that remains present in his mind—he is the college’s first African-American president, and the significance of his appointment is hardly lost on him or on the entirety of the Hampden-Sydney community. Howard wants to make it clear, however, that he is “here for the entire Farmville, Prince Edward County, Hampden-Sydney community. Having said that, I am the great-great-grandson of a slave—and here I am, leading an institution that was founded on a plantation.”
Yet Dr. Howard remains focused on his responsibility as president, aware of the fact that presidents of any institution are faced with challenges regardless of historical precedence. “All honor should go to the board of trustees for choosing me,” Dr. Howard added, “but now, I need to uphold my own part of the bargain.”
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