Jake Schrum

Jake Schrum

Written by Shannon Colletti Friday, 13 June 2008

Q. How has Southwestern changed since you attended as a student in the mid-1960s?

A. The transformation is stunning when you look at the number of buildings, and the capital resources the university has in those buildings. All of our classrooms are smart classrooms. The university owns 200 to 300 acres of land more than when I was here. There were about 850 students, and now there are 400 more. The student body is, on the whole, much stronger academically. When I was here, Southwestern was a good, little, regional college, and now it’s a very strong, national liberal arts college.

Q. What drew you to Southwestern as a student, and what prompted you to return as president?

A. What drew me here was [that] I knew the president of the university. Our families had known each other a long time. And two or three of my friends in high school had decided to attend here. I also wanted to play basketball here and thought I could. I liked the whole idea of having a lot of personal attention in the classroom. I thought, even in the mid-’60s, that having a degree from Southwestern would be a real value. What drew me back was the [ability] that Southwestern has as an institution to truly provide a transformational educational experience.

Q. What is the most important aspect of your job?

A. To help all the stakeholders at Southwestern — faculty, students, staff, alumni, trustees, friends, everybody who cares about Southwestern — believe they can help us achieve its mission and core purpose, [which] is to foster a liberal arts community whose values and actions encourage contributions toward the well being of humanity.

Q. What are the biggest challenges Southwestern faces?

A. All of the resources we need to realize our dreams and our goals and our objectives — that is the main job, just to find the resources to make that happen.

Q. What traits are helpful for someone in your position?

A. A respect for the potential that education has to transform people into better persons. Patience. Sense of humor. Unlimited energy. Loving and caring about faculty, students, all the people who are important to the university.

Q. What advantages does Southwestern have over a larger, public institution?

A. We can spend a lot of time with a student or someone who is involved here, and we can help them make the very powerful connections between a discipline they’re studying and what’s going on in their life and in the world, which is something some larger schools claim to do, but they can’t do it on the scale that we do it. Just like we can’t educate large numbers of people on the scale that they do. That’s probably the best thing we do.

Q. How has the national economy affected the university?

A. I think the mortgage crisis has affected the student loan business. All of the concerns about the economy have caused a lot of families to question where they might go to college and how much they’re willing to pay for it; what kind of debt they’re willing to take on to pay for it; what’s its value to them. They’re looking at absolute dollars laid out, rather than what’s the value of what they’re getting.

Q. What is the most rewarding part of your job?

A. Seeing the transformational effect of education on our students. Interacting with students on a regular basis. And having the belief that you’re truly helping to prepare the next generation to do a better job of some of the things this generation hasn’t done as well as it could have.

Q. What are some of the university’s goals?

A. One of our overall goals is to be an inspiration to other schools of our type because the programs that we’re coming up with are causing people to reevaluate and re-envision the importance of the liberal arts. Right now we’re in a $125 million fund-raising campaign [and want] to finish that campaign with at least the amount we said we needed. Another is to make our student body, faculty and staff more ethnically diverse than it is now. To strengthen the residential nature of our community. To take advantage of the very valuable property that we own just east of our golf course on Hwy. 29. To have more funds available to help our students afford college and more funds to help our faculty develop their scholarly life in their discipline. To make sure in the next few years that our carbon footprint is neutral. To find a way to engage our friends and fellow citizens in Georgetown in a way that they feel like this is their university. And finally to strengthen the Paideia program so that it is seen as one of the most distinctive co-academic programs in America.

Education: Bachelor’s in psychology, Southwestern University; Master of Divinity degree, Yale University

Background: Vice president and president of Texas Wesleyan University; vice president for university relations, Southwestern; vice president for development and planning, Emory University; ordained United Methodist minister

Elected president: January 2000

Family: Wife, Jane, and two daughters

Contact: 863-1454, schrum@southwestern.edu

Southwestern University trivia

• The first institution of higher learning in Texas, SU was chartered as Rutersville College in 1840 by the Republic of Texas.
• SU’s colors of black and canary were chosen in 1898.
• The Laura Kuykendall Hall was renamed such upon the death of the Dean of Women in 1935. Her benevolent ghost is said to still haunt the dormitory that bears her name.
• SU defeated the University of Texas at Austin 63-10 in the first collegiate baseball game in the state in 1884.
• SU was a 1915 founding member of the Southwest Conference, playing the likes of Texas A&M University, Texas Baylor and the University of Oklahoma.
• The first approved, all-school dance was held in the West Gym in 1941.
• UT-Southwestern Medical School in Dallas was once part of SU.
• SU’s football team finished the 1943 season ranked in the nation’s Top 10 and won the 1944 and 1945 Sun Bowl. SU dropped the sport in 1952.
• SMU was founded in 1909 when attempts to move Southwestern to either Dallas or Fort Worth failed.
• The Commons was not always the eating establishment on campus. It opened in 1966 with a nickname of the “Gastrodome.” The name did not stick. Before that time, students ate in what is now McCullough Hall.
• When SU opened its doors in Georgetown in 1873, its name was Texas University. The state later made SU relinquish the name.

Source: Southwestern University