Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.The Rev. John Schlegel, retiring president of Creighton University, might soon find himself in the City That Never Sleeps, the economic epicenter of the world.
Either that or he's moving to a country that more than 250,000 people fled last year to escape a violent ruler, economic turmoil and one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics.
Those two alternatives — New York City or Zimbabwe — are as much as Schlegel is willing to say about his next Jesuit assignment after 11 years spent as Creighton's leader.
In those 11 years Schlegel has built Creighton into the premier Midwestern private university of its kind, according to national rankings. He has grown enrollment and doubled applications to the school. He has expanded the campus by 40 acres and then transformed it with state-of-the-art buildings paid for by a historic $400 million fundraising drive that he spearheaded.
So forgive him if he takes it easy on his last day.
Today, his final official day as Creighton's president, the 68-year-old Schlegel plans to stroll the campus from one end to the other, saying goodbye to professors and staff.
He will play racquetball in the morning and then golf in the afternoon.
He will go to bed early so he can hit the road before dawn, bound for Milwaukee, where he will sort out his post-presidential life.
“I've gotten all sorts of advice about how to let go,” Schlegel said during a recent interview. “But how do you really prepare for this? I absolutely love what I do.”
During that interview, Schlegel zigzagged between Creighton's past and its future, offering insights and predictions that he didn't publicly share during his time as president.
Among them:
>> Creighton will continue to grow, but that growth will come on the Internet instead of through campus expansion or undergraduate enrollment.
>> The Catholic Church's stands on moral and political issues, particularly abortion, have hurt Creighton's fundraising over the years.
>> His successor, the Rev. Timothy Lannon, shares most of Schlegel's philosophies but differs greatly from Schlegel in leadership style and personality.
Schlegel said he is proud that Creighton's Catholic identity has remained strong even as the number of Jesuits on campus has continued to drop.
In the 1970s, when Schlegel taught at Creighton, about 75 Jesuits worked at the university, he said. Now that number is 32, a decline similar to a downward national trend showing that “the long black line is getting shorter and grayer,” Schlegel said.
Creighton has made up for its lack of Jesuits by teaching faculty and staff about Catholic identity at annual retreats, Schlegel said.
During Schlegel's tenure the school also grew closer to the Omaha Archdiocese, despite several flare-ups when church leaders criticized guest speakers or had objections to faculty members' scholarly articles.
Archdiocesan and Creighton University leaders will never agree on everything, Schlegel thinks. But taking the Catholic Church out of Creighton would be a crippling mistake, he said.
“Without the Catholic identity we'd be just another good liberal-arts based Midwestern university,” he said.
But that identity — specifically the church's anti-abortion stance — has caused friction with deep-pocketed Omahans who might otherwise support the school, Schlegel said.
He declined to name names but made clear that losing several potential donors who are abortion rights advocates had a financial impact on the school over the years.
“Sometimes doing what we're doing has come at a real cost,” he said. “That's the price of doing business, I guess. ... They live by their convictions, we live by ours, and that's fine.”
Schlegel, who presided over the biggest Creighton expansion in decades, doesn't believe that the university has any real need in the decade to come to expand outside its current boundaries.
Creighton does own some undeveloped land near north downtown that will likely be developed, he said, but that land generally falls within the campus's existing borders.
Creighton's growth will likely be digital, Schlegel said, primarily birthing and growing online programs to lure graduate students. He mentioned master's degrees in professional science and educational leadership as examples of new, dynamic programs with the ability to attract large numbers of graduate students quickly. Educational leadership “has already gone gangbusters,” he said.
“The Creighton brand is very well-received,” he said. “The question is, over time, do you even want a physical campus? This is a real question. Is that long term? And I don't have that answer.”
Schlegel has known his successor, Lannon, since 1969, when Lannon was an undergraduate sitting in one of the first political science courses Schlegel taught at Creighton.
When Schlegel told the university's board he was planning to step down, he put together a short list of potential replacements. Lannon, a Creighton alum and then president of St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, was featured prominently on that short list, Schlegel said.
He thinks Lannon will be a good president, partly because he understands the Omaha area and already knows many Creighton alums and donors from his tenure as president of Omaha Creighton Prep.
Schlegel has heard that Lannon will be a much different leader from Schlegel. Creighton faculty who know both Jesuit priests say Lannon is gregarious while Schlegel is wry and reserved.
“The style will be different — I've been told that by many people,” Schlegel said. “But I think that's good. I think change is very healthy.”
Change is exactly what Schlegel is trying to prepare for. He drives east to Milwaukee on Friday, where he will take a six-month sabbatical and then head to either New York City or Zimbabwe for his next mission as a Jesuit priest.
Schlegel said only that the mission won't be another college presidency.
But first he'll take some time today, walk the campus and savor his 11 years at Creighton University.
“You get up, you go to work, and a lot of times you don't see the cumulative effect, how things are changing,” Schlegel said.
“I've been a little more reflective” in the past few months, he said. “I've been more appreciative of what's happened here.”
Contact the writer: 402-444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com
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