Chapter 28

DEMON DEACON

The accreditation team recommended that we support institutional assessment.

They were being polite.

We didn't need strengthening. We needed an overhaul.

Before I became president, the CFO had recommended that the College purchase PowerCampus—an enterprise resource planning system designed specifically for small colleges and universities. It was a serious platform, capable of integrating admissions, enrollment, academics, financial aid, billing, and records into a single system. Used properly, it could generate clean, reliable, defensible data across the institution.

The problem wasn't the system.

The problem was that no one had been trained to use it. PowerCampus had been installed, but never implemented.

Faculty and staff entered data inconsistently. Definitions varied by department. Reports were pulled manually, adjusted independently, and circulated without reconciliation. People trusted what looked familiar, not what was accurate.

It was like buying a Lamborghini and never getting it out of first gear.

The machine wasn't failing. The drivers didn't know how to drive it.

Worse, bad data had been entered early and then replicated—term after term, report after report. Once that happens, errors don't announce themselves. They normalize. They become institutional memory.

By the time the accreditation team flagged institutional research, the issue wasn't a single report or office.

It was structural.

By then, I had spoken to enough consultants to recognize the difference between people who talked about institutional research and people who had actually lived inside it—people who under-stood how data fails quietly before it fails publicly.

I didn't need a consultant. I needed an expert. The list was short.

When I saw that one of them was from Wake Forest, I thought, Why not call him —he's a fellow Demon Deacon? The worst he could say was no.

I called.

He picked up himself. No assistant. No buffer.

"Hello," he said, in a southern drawl. "This is Ross Griffith."

I explained why I was calling. I told him we needed someone who understood how to rebuild institutional research from the ground up—not cosmetically, but structurally.

There was a pause.

Then he said, slowly, "Well… I know yooouuu." "Excuse me?"

"You played on the tennis team at Wake," he said. "And I believe you were floormates with my daughter, Susanna."

I stopped.

"Mr. Griffith?" I said. "The men's junior varsity coach? The umpire?"

"Why yes," he said. "That's me."

I laughed. "What a small world. How's Susanna?"

When I hung up, I called Don. "How did the call go?" he asked.

"I just hired our new Director of Institutional Research," I said. "He'll be here Monday."

That call marked a shift.

Not from crisis to calm—but from reaction to structure. From explaining problems to fixing systems. From managing scrutiny to anticipating it.

Ross arrived the following week.

I told him where I thought the failures were and asked him to verify them.

He didn't argue. He didn't reassure. He didn't theorize. He read the reports.

Then he asked for the raw data.

That's how I knew I'd made the right call.

Because anyone can read a report. Only someone who under-stands institutional integrity asks how the numbers were born.

Re-Accreditation

By the time we reached re-accreditation, the institution felt different.

Not calmer. Clearer.

The work Ross and I began didn't move quickly, but it moved correctly. We stripped everything back to raw data—enrollment, reten-tion, graduation, licensure, outcomes—by program, by cohort, by zip code. We rebuilt definitions. We corrected histories. We stopped letting reports tell comforting stories and started asking them to tell the truth.

It wasn't glamorous work. It was tedious. It was exacting.

And it required a level of discipline the institution hadn't been asked to sustain before.

Slowly, the numbers began to agree with each other. When data is clean, it stops arguing.

That's when patterns emerge—not guesses, not anecdotes, but facts you can't explain away. We could see where students came from, where they stalled, where they finished. We could see which

programs held, which ones strained, and which ones needed to change.

And we could see something else just as clearly.

There were two cultures living inside the same institution.

On Long Island, the posture was passive. Problems were always someone else's responsibility. Faculty taught their classes. Staff completed their tasks. Outcomes—retention, licensure, completion

—were viewed as administrative concerns, not shared ones. When something didn't work, fingers pointed sideways.

In Manhattan, it was different.

Faculty and staff took ownership. If a student struggled, they leaned in. If a program faltered, they adjusted. People didn't wait to be told what was broken—they fixed it. The work felt collective. Purposeful. Alive.

I didn't announce the contrast. I didn't correct it publicly. I watched it.

Because culture always reveals itself under pressure.

As re-accreditation approached, the pressure increased. Site visits. Follow-up questions. Requests for clarification. This is the point where institutions usually tense up—where leadership braces for exposure.

We didn't.

Not because we were perfect, but because we were prepared. When the decision came through, the language mattered.

I was described as an effective and dynamic leader.

It was a far cry from years earlier, when John—the educational consultant—had looked at me and said I was the college's weakest link.

I didn't celebrate the reversal. I noted it.

Because the work hadn't changed. Only the structure around it had.

Somewhere along the way, without anyone naming it, my role had expanded. Decisions that should have lived with deans or department heads landed on my desk instead. Fixes. Follow-ups.

Interventions. I didn't take them because I wanted control. I took them because when I didn't, things fell through.

They knew I would catch the baby.

So I learned everything. I knew which reports were wrong before they were submitted. Which numbers didn't reconcile. Which students were slipping through cracks no one else was watching. I filled the gaps where accountability was thin and systems were still learning how to hold.

For a while, that worked.

The institution stabilized. Re-accreditation was secured. The data held. The systems functioned.

But strategy requires space. Operations consume it.

Every hour correcting what should have been owned elsewhere was an hour not spent building what came next. And the vision—the real vision—wasn't just to survive accreditation cycles. It was to become a harbinger of new ideas. New programs. New ways of serving students who had been structurally excluded.

The Board could see that. I could see it.

But much of the Long Island faculty and staff either didn't see it, didn't believe it, or knew—quietly—that they couldn't do it.

And once the vessel could hold steady on its own, the captain was no longer the point.

The College was fine.

What it could not yet do was move forward at the speed the mission required.

That was the moment I understood, without anger or regret. I wasn't burned out.

I was finished.

Not because the work failed— but because it succeeded.

Licensure

Re-accreditation confirmed that the institution held. Licensure would confirm that the students did.

The first graduating class sat for the state exam a few weeks

later. For both Syosset and Manhattan, we arranged buses. The students arrived early, filed in quietly, number-two pencils in hand. No speeches. No ceremony. Just rows of chairs, proctors, and hours of silence.

Then they walked back out. And we waited.

Four weeks.

The call came on a Saturday.

I was in the Village, getting my haircut. Nothing notable. Just an ordinary afternoon—conversation, scissors, the hum of a dryer.

My phone rang. I stepped outside.

A high majority of the students had passed. Not narrowly. Not barely.

Passed.

And then the detail that stopped me:

The Harlem students had a higher pass rate than the Syosset students.

I leaned against the brick wall and closed my eyes. And I cried.

Not quietly. Not carefully. Tears of relief and joy—the kind that come when something you've carried for years finally releases. When the risk proves itself worth taking. When the work holds.

This wasn't symbolic. This wasn't aspirational. This wasn't a press release.

This was data. They had done it.

The students people said wouldn't. The students people said weren't "ours." The students who were supposed to need exceptions.

They didn't need exceptions.

They needed access, structure, and accountability. I called John.

I didn't explain. I didn't frame it. I didn't defend anything. I just said, "The kids did it."

There was a pause.

Then he said, "Congratulations."

He sounded genuinely happy.

I could hear the commotion on his end. His wife, Marie, must have heard him on the phone. I heard him tell her.

She got on the phone.

"Oh, that is wonderful," she said. "So wonderful. Congratu-lations."

That was the moment the arc closed.

Re-accreditation proved the institution worked. Licensure proved the mission did.

After that, there was nothing left to prove.

Don Steps Down

Don had stepped down as Chair.

There was no announcement that required interpretation. No explanation that needed to be managed. He had other projects that required his attention and to reduce his schedule for medical reasons.

I was sorry he stepped down. But I understood.

Don had always been the visionary. He thought beyond imme-diate fixes and quarterly concerns. He was drawn to the College because it could become something distinctive—nimble, responsive, willing to try ideas that larger institutions discussed but rarely executed.

His presence shaped the tone of the work. Not operationally, but strategically. He asked different questions. He held a longer horizon.

When he stepped aside, nothing broke.

The Board continued. Leadership continued. The College continued. After Don left, I didn't believe that his innovative vision would expand.

The Assistant

Somewhere along the way, without a meeting or a memo, a quiet understanding took hold.

If something went wrong, it would land with me.

Not because it was formally my responsibility—but because everyone knew it would be handled if it landed there.

Decisions that should have lived with deans or department heads began arriving on my desk already half-formed. Problems surfaced late, after they had traveled through several hands without resolution. When timelines slipped or data didn't reconcile, the assumption was not urgency.

It was inevitability. Lisa will catch it. So I did.

I learned every system because I had to. I knew which reports were wrong before they were submitted. Which numbers didn't line up. Which students were slipping through cracks no one else was watching. I stepped in where accountability was thin and followed issues until they resolved—not once, but repeatedly.

For a while, that worked.

The institution stabilized. The data held. The systems func-tioned. Re-accreditation was secured. Externally, the College looked strong.

Internally, something else was happening.

HR hired an assistant for me around that time. He had an MBA. Fresh degree. Impressive résumé. He knew every framework, every model, every phrase that sounds good in a strategic plan.

What he didn't have was judgment.

It wasn't just inexperience. It was something harder to teach. Nature or nurture—in this case, the answer was clear.

He didn't have it.

One late afternoon, I was still at my desk reviewing yet another report. At 4:50 p.m., I could hear him cleaning up—papers stacked, computer shutting down, chair sliding back. A few minutes later, he walked into my office with a pile of documents.

"I need you to sign off on these," he said. He stood there, waiting.

I looked up.

Then he said, "You know, may I say something?" "Of course," I said.

"I just want you to know," he said earnestly, "that someday I want to be president of a college—or a company—just like you."

I took that in. I smiled.

"Well, that's great," I said. "But you do know that means there will be some nights you have to stay past five."

He stared at me blankly.

It went right over his head.

In that moment, something clarified—not about him, but about the institution.

Leadership isn't ambition. It's ownership.

It's staying when no one is watching. It's making the call no one wants to make. It's catching the baby until the system learns not to drop it.

And the system had learned—but it was relying on me to catch everything anyway.

The College was no longer fragile. It didn't need rescuing. But it hadn't yet learned how to distribute responsibility at the level the mission demanded.

Competence had become centralized. Mine.

And I understood then that this was no longer a problem to solve. It was a condition to acknowledge.

I could keep doing this indefinitely. I was good at it.

But doing so would mean confusing indispensability with progress.

I had come to build something that could stand. Now it could.

And once it could hold steady on its own, the question was no longer whether I was capable.

It was whether I was still necessary in the way I wanted to be. That answer was beginning to surface.

Nothing Left To Prove

Whether it was tennis, entertainment, or innovation, what always drove me was the work itself.

Not recognition. Not position. The work. I can see that clearly now.

People like to say the College was the little engine that could. And in many ways, that was true. It climbed hills that should have stopped it. It survived moments that might have ended it quietly. It served students who had been told—directly or indirectly—that higher education wasn't meant for them.

But the truth is more precise than the metaphor. It wasn't the institution alone.

It was a handful of people who kept pushing it forward—often uphill, often without momentum, often carrying more than their share. I was one of them. There were others. We knew who we were.

With blood, sweat, and more than a few tears, we made the institution stable. Functional. Credible. We delivered outcomes. We earned reaccreditation. We expanded access. We graduated students who passed their licensing exams and entered professions that changed their lives.

We didn't lower standards to make that happen. We raised support.

That mattered.

For the first time, the College didn't need saving. The systems held. The data told the truth. The culture—at least in parts of the institution—had shifted from fragility to function, from anxiety to accountability.

There was nothing left to prove.

I had done what I came to do, and the College was ready to continue in the way that suited its future.

I have always been drawn to the work of creating something new.

The mission was complete. And so was my part in it.

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