ABSTRACT
The least controllable aspect of leadership—but possibly one of the most influential—is the leader’s background: the family of origin and the social situation from which he or she comes. What emerges as an almost universal circumstance in these stories of leadership development from university presidents is that the parents of nearly all of them had a tremendous influence, not just on their educational preparation but on their conviction that higher education is a domain of unique value. The choice of the area in which they were to concentrate their achievement seems, to a great extent, to have been guided by the deep reverence for higher education that almost all report that they learned as children. That is true not only of Kirwan, Coleman, and Vest, who, having grown up on a university campus, might have been expected to see higher education as a desirable career, but of presidents like David Ward, Norman Francis, and me, whose parents didn’t have the opportunity to complete a traditional secondary school education. In some instances, these leaders in higher education were singled out as youngsters through an early use of academic ability/academic achievement testing. Shirley Jackson benefited from academic tracking and the mentorship of exceptional teachers brought to Washington D.C. to teach in the newly integrated schools. John Casteen’s academic progress was closely monitored by University of Virginia professors and administrators. Mary Sue Coleman’s interest in science was encouraged in the laboratory school that she attended on the University of Northern Iowa campus.
