Leading and Learning: An Interview with Thomas Corts

For more than two decades, Thomas E. Corts has served as President of Samford University, which during those years has become one of the nation’s premier Christian universities. Among the highlights of his Samford years are the purchase of a London study centre, astounding growth in the endowment (from $8 million in 1983 to $258 million today), national recognition for Samford in such publications as U.S. News & World Report, construction of more than 30 new buildings, increases in overall and on-campus enrollment and progress in many other areas. Earlier this year he announced plans to retire at the end of the 2005-06 academic year. LeaderLinks editor Michael Duduit recently visited with Dr. Corts to discuss what he has learned about leadership while serving as a college president.

LeaderLinks: Why are Christian colleges and universities important in terms of training leadership for churches and the culture?

Corts: I think its very important to see ourselves not just as sort of a factory to turn out leadership for the church — as important as I think that is, and I certainly believe that means professional leadership in the sense of professional ministers but also the laity. Our experience is that people who do choose the kind of institution that identifies itself as Christian tend to be people who have a church connection. That’s not universally true but it’s predominantly true.

We are nurturing all through the college years the sense that God is expecting something from us as individuals and we have an accountability to the Lord. That’s reinforced, I hope through a lot of the different classes, but also through all the models that they see. Here (at Samford) you would find a lot of students would reflect a view that would be very different from the view at many state universities, even if you were talking about gay marriage or some subject like that. I think that the surroundings tend to help shape and mold you, and if the surround is “let’s go drink beer for recreation” then that is one mindset. And if the surrounding has no sort of Christian thrust and nothing about the church, nothing about ethical expectations, nothing about what’s expected of us as accountable human beings, then that’s vacant in one’s life. So I’d like to think that this kind of institution confronts a student with that sense of personal accountability, the claim of the Lord upon one’s life in a way that might not happen in other kinds of institutions.

LeaderLinks: What would be the difference in the classroom experience for a student in a Christian university vs. a secular university?

Corts: I would hope that students feel a lot freer —   freer to raise the question or make an observation that is a patently religious or spiritual application. You might feel very uneasy doing that in the average state university. I think that’s one dimension. I would hope that a professor would make any connection he can to do and say that which is in contrast to secular society, in contrast to secular culture. And at the same time I would hope he would point out where scripture might apply, where the sense of Christian people is, where the church has made a clear statement on given points, where we think the gospel has an application.

LeaderLinks: Why do you think that Christian universities are important in the nation and to our culture?

Corts: When you think about how the church originally got into education, it was because it felt education was so important. The early church faced a secular culture with the Roman pantheon of gods and so forth. The culture was just totally opposed to them. We face a culture that’s totally opposed in a different sort of way but I really think we have the responsibility to speak against it as we can. And I think we need to be part of that group again. So I think the society is well served by voices of conscience speaking to the issues of today, with the colony of scholars that our faculty represents — a colony that’s plugged into the church. We’re also needling the church — as the church falls asleep it needs to be awakened. So I think our impact is much greater than first meets the eye.

LeaderLinks: If you could change one thing about Christian higher education in the US, what would it be?

Corts: If I could change one thing, it would be the whole process of choosing faculty – it is just so delicate and so important. Almost all of our faculty come from large secular institutions. I myself went through a large secular institution. It was a very good institution and my education was good — I have no complaint — but there was nothing there that would have prepared me if I had not had a Christian upbringing, been in a Christian college as an undergraduate. Nothing would have prepared me. The best preparation I had was having had the experience and having gone to a Christian college as an undergraduate.

Now some of the best people we have here are people who did not go to Christian colleges and my sense is that they had to overcome the deficit of not knowing how this kind of institution ought to work, because their experience was the secular institution at the undergraduate and certainly at the graduate level. I think if I could change anything it would be to try to try to break out of that lock step and be able to hire the people who truly had a Christian experience, a background of capacity and capability, academic credentials — all the essentials and you could put those together in the life or lifestyle that were represented of our values.

LeaderLinks: Let’s talk about your own experience as an educational leader. You’ve been at Samford for 22 years, and the university has had remarkable progress.  What are some things that you’ve learned about leadership as you’ve gone through the process of leading this institution for more than two decades?

Corts: I think I’ve learned several things although I’m not a very good student of leadership in the abstract; I realize that. I guess I’ve just sort of blundered into the things I’ve learned.

I’ve learned that decisiveness is very important. If you put off a decision, it usually comes back to bite you. A lot of hard decisions you put off. You need to make the hard decisions and make them faster. I probably believe more firmly than ever that I don’t have all the answers; I know it even better now than I did when I was younger. And to trust the judgment of others has been very important.

You make mistakes, like saving money you can’t afford to save. There’s a person you would hire but that person is $10,000 more; looking back, $10,000 would have been as easy as a sneeze but it was the breaking point and we ended up with the wrong person in the wrong place for maybe five or ten years. The cost of that was hundreds of thousands of dollars and I was busy saving $10,000. So there are economies you can’t afford. That was a hard lesson to learn. To learn that I asked a good friend of mine — a very successful businessman – “what is the most basic business principle that’s guided you?” When he was living he bought and sold many things and his answer was. “I never have to have anything. I know who I am. I know where I’m headed – my eternal home. And I can make an offer on a car and if he doesn’t want it then I don’t need it. I don’t just have to have this. He’s got me where he wants me if I’ve got to have it but I’ve got him where I want him if I don’t have to have anything.”

I’ve made some bad mistakes when I got so excited about something I wanted that and I was going to have — once I got it, it was a tiger by the tail or I didn’t need it so badly after all. Right now I don’t care a thing about the cheese; just get me out of the trap. A few lessons like that come to you. I think leadership is very poorly taught in abstraction; cases and experiences and the experiences of others are where you really learn.

LeaderLinks: Virtually every leader has some group to whom he or she is accountable. As a university president you have a board of trustees to whom you relate. Trustees are volunteers but many of them are very high-powered business leaders in their own right. What are some of the things you’ve learned about relating to a board?

Corts: I very much prize the bond I have with the board. I’ve had a wonderful relationship and I’ve always been brutally honest. I think I’ve admitted mistakes to them. They’ve admitted mistakes to me. We’ve had a wonderful, very direct relationship so there’s nothing fuzzy going on. I’ve always tried to follow the letter of the law in terms of ethical decision making.

I’ve tried not to make this institution an extension of my own will but to bear in mind that I’m only here for a time. I think that has really pressed down upon me in the last decade. You’re privileged — almost like a relay race — to run a few laps but you hand it off to somebody else. An institution like ours that’s been going for 164 years — you realize there are seventeen other names on that medallion over there that have had this job, so I’m not permanent. You’ve got to provide for the permanency of the organization and not just to make it your own stopping point.

One of the things I appreciate about this institution is the last three presidents have all been here a very substantial time. We’ve had three presidents since 1939, which is a pretty impressive record. I don’t think they looked at this like a way station or a place to work your way up. This was a calling. For various reasons I have on occasion thought my time was up and it just didn’t seem to be.

I think that the establishment of a very strong, direct, candid kind of relationship with the board is very important and to not presume that it’s an extension of you. To have the sense that you work for them is very important — that you are directly accountable to them. I’ve followed a procedure of asking for evaluations every five years. I’ve had a written evaluation involving other people. I think that has both strengthened my hand by demonstrating the community that yes, we do a lot of evaluating but I’m willing to do that myself. And they’ve pointed out some points of less than perfection on my part but they’ve been very gracious about that.

We’ve formed just recently a committee on the board itself which works hard at both recruiting trustees and also evaluates and helps each trustee evaluate his own service and how we function as a board, which has been very good. And we’re highly participatory. Our board tends to speak up and ask why and how come and who said? Why did we do it this way instead of that way? That’s been very helpful.

LeaderLinks: Looking back 22 years to when you first came here as President — are there some things you wished you had known then that you’ve learned over the years?

Corts: I didn’t always use my time wisely. I put a lot of time in on things that really didn’t count. I like to write what I’m going to do. I like to write my own stuff. So everything I do myself. Every letter that goes out of here I have read and approved. Once in a very great while somebody has written a letter which I will sign, but they will tell you not without editing it a little bit. That wasn’t always the best policy. I spent way too much time tramping around on minor things. I think that if I had it to do over I would say: What’s the best use of my time? I’m trying to use my time more wisely now.

I’m basically a little bit shy. I wish I were a little more outgoing and I probably could have been more effective if I had been. That’s just sort of a personality quirk but as I look back I think that probably has hindered me. One or two of my brothers are much better at meeting people or being out front. But I think that the basic purpose of the institution — I had it in my heart. I had a sense of what I was supposed to be about. I think that I’m enormously blessed in having gotten to do in my working life what I really wanted to do; not everybody gets to do that.

LeaderLinks: Time does seem to be the great challenge for leaders, doesn’t it?

Corts: It really does and I don’t think you realize that at first. You tend to treat everything as equally important – everything that comes across your desk. Ernest Boyer once said that he found this president at a state university in New York, and about half of what came across his desk he did nothing with for about a week. It just took care of itself. He’d find this memo that he meant to do something with and it was urgent at the moment but it somehow resolved itself.

An awful lot of what comes across my desk is that way. Somebody just thinks that this has to have a decision and it has to come from me. I’ll set it aside and a week or so later the crisis was avoided completely and somebody solved it, or it didn’t make any difference. And I might have toiled on that long and hard!

Yet I have to say that there are some very wonderful events, some wonderful things that have fallen beneficially to us just out of very casual observation, so I try to take people seriously. I try not to belittle people. I try to be responsive — not to make anybody think that I’m too busy to see them, that I don’t have time. I enjoy people so I think that comes easy but I think that you don’t put people off and you’re not hard to get to and you don’t seem remote and aloof. At the same time, focus on what needs focusing. I can go up here and stop every student that walks by to learn their story and be enriched by it — and I’d love doing it, I really would — but it would not be the best use of my time.