Experience It.

Richard T. Jurasek, Ph.D. Named President of Medaille College

This article originally appeared in the Medaille Magazine, Spring 2007 edition.

Richard JurasekWhile Richard T. Jurasek, Ph.D., won’t begin as the 6th President of Medaille College until June 1, 2007, it is evident that he is ready to hit the ground running today. In early April, Jurasek came to campus and met with administrators, trustees, faculty, staff and students. He listened to our community discuss concerns, challenges, and areas of pride, and discussed a systematic approach that he believes will help Medaille reach the next level. He also discussed why the opportunity at Medaille was one he could not pass on.

"I was attracted to the College because of its mission: the commitment to serve learning in unqualified ways, in absolute terms; and to assume that every single learner deserves our maximum effort above all things," Jurasek says. "The second attraction point was this institutional record of being able to harmonize things that often are at conflict with each other in higher education. The college is committed to liberal learning as much as it is to pre-professional learning. The college is just as committed to undergraduate learning as it is to graduate learning. The list of harmonies goes on.

"Finally, there is a set of virtues that I think the institution has," Jurasek continues. "It is entrepreneurial, it is nimble, and it is tough. Those are very positive, and those are the three things that attracted me to the college."

At Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, Jurasek served as the chief operations officer with direct responsibility for admissions, financial aid, academic affairs, student affairs and auxiliary services. Previously, he served in administrative and faculty positions with Augustana College in Illinois and Earlham College in Indiana. He feels the cumulative effect of his experience has made him an ideal choice for Medaille.

Richard T. Jurasek"My entire career has spanned so many things, that I feel very comfortable and confident in responding to this set of challenges," Jurasek says. "I have already encountered, engaged in, and learned about everything that I need to do at Medaille, so my entire job portfolio seems to be a near-perfect fit for this new job."

Jurasek’s initial evaluation of Medaille, along with information gathered through the search process and discussions with faculty, staff and administration, has allowed him to identify immediate areas to address upon starting.

"Three challenges that need attention immediately are to convert growth to strategic growth, to become more competent and convincing in describing the work we actually do, and to begin to lay the foundation for a robust fund raising enterprise," Jurasek says. "What is unique about a Medaille degree, undergrad or graduate? We have to become more convincing, more accurate in describing and measuring our work."

Medaille is not alone in facing complex marketplace challenges.

"The largest, most complex enterprise that private higher education has to engage in, is learning how to better describe what it does," Jurasek says. "Post-secondary education is an incredibly crowded, competitive and unforgiving marketplace. The challenge is, how do you stand out? In what ways, can you convince people to pay your tuition? We have an acutely compromised starting point in this marketplace, because we have no endowment. This puts a sharper edge on these challenges and issues."

Jurasek would also like to see higher education, in general, get back to what it was originally intended for.

"I hope that colleges, private and public, will rediscover and act upon their mandate to serve the public good," Jurasek says. "If our conclusion is that America today is far less than the ideal, then it is up to post secondary education to respond. American colleges and universities always had this explicit mandate in their missions from their founding parents, to graduate people who would serve, who would know how to serve, to contribute to democracy. It was always implied that American higher education wanted to instill something beyond content learning in x, y and z.

Despite the challenges faced by Medaille and higher education institutions across the land, Jurasek is excited about the opportunity at Medaille. He has a fourstep plan to achieve aspirations of his own – making Medaille a college of first choice for more learners.

"Our aspiration, our reasonable goal to become a college of first choice, can be achieved if we become more effective in the ways we expand our programs," Jurasek says. "The things we choose to invest in and develop have to make strategic sense, educational sense, and not just tuition sense. The second enterprise is self improvement. That often means confronting the brutal facts about develweaknesses inside the organization and responding. Self awareness leads to self improvement.

"The third engine is the idea of being as smart as possible about what the outputs are," Jurasek continues. "The inputs in our work are human beings. We take their tuition and we simply have to get better in describing the outputs. We’re improving human beings and we have to become much better at describing what we have actually improved. Once we have gotten better at number two and three, we will be able to better promote the college in ways we haven’t been able to do in the past."

While some may bristle at winters in Buffalo, Jurasek says it feels like home. He also is excited about all that Western New York has to offer.

"I love the idea of moving to Western New York," Jurasek says. "I grew up on and in Lake Erie, and I am very much taken with the geography and terrain south of Buffalo, down to the hills and the vineyards. Also, this is a very sophisticated mid-size metropolitan area with cultural opportunities that exceed what one would predict for the size of the community."

Jurasek and his wife Barbara, a tenured professor at Earlham College, will relocate to Buffalo this summer. They have a daughter, Christina, who will be graduating from Earlham this spring with a double major in Psychology and Art History. Jurasek hopes to rejuvenate some community activities that were dear to him in Ohio.

"I found it very satisfying to work with Habitat for Humanity as a volunteer; I would love to do that again," Jurasek recalls fondly. "Secondly, I served on a community and county economic development council in Ohio. It was extremely satisfying to work on the economic well being of the community."

Jurasek’s hobbies include cooking, landscape gardening, and woodworking.

"I love to fashion things," Jurasek says. "Whether it is a new dish, a design in the garden or a piece of furniture, it is a satisfying pattern. I’ve built some ugly things too, but those are in the basement."

While it is still very early, it appears that the Medaille board of trustees has selected a president with the right tools to fashion a premier destination for higher education.