Archive - January 19, 2012

Paul Geren arrived at the Baptist college as a veteran foreign service officer with a wide-ranging successful career in government. He had been deputy director at the Peace Corps in its first year. He had been a diplomat for more than a decade. And he had been a college faculty member and a vice president of Baylor University. He  was 54 when he was appointed just the fifth president of  Stetson University. Geren’s first success at Stetson was setting up a foreign exchange program and building a swimming pool for the students! But the wheels soon came off his presidency. What happened? Why was Geren such a quick failure at Stetson University when he had such a successful career earlier in his life. Or had he been so successful? He had lasted less than a year at the Peace Corps; he never jelled with the Mad Men and Women in the Maiatico Building at 806 Connecticut Avenue. He was, everyone soon learned, not . . .