Let me take a break from my customary dyspeptic eruptions in this space to wish Roger Hull, outgoing president of Union College, all the best.
He is leaving the college at the end of June, after 15 years, and I think it says a lot about him that even at the age of 62 he has no thought of settling in Maui and devoting himself to shuffleboard.
“I'm going to work all my life,” he told me in a recent conversation, and the only question is whether a foundation he plans to create will take all his time or will leave him enough hours in the day so that he might do something else, also.
The foundation he has in mind will bring poor, mostly black, inner-city kids to college campuses for extra instruction two days a week, and will require the kids' parents to participate also, since what is accomplished at school “can easily be undone at home,” he says.
He hopes to set up a $1 million endowment fund per college – half from the college itself, half that he will raise – and use the interest from the money to make the program work.
He wants to do this at college after college, across the country, which might seem to you or me like plenty to keep someone busy. But he acknowledges he has been approached with another offer, which he might accept if it will still allow him to do the foundation.
He won't say what that offer is, or what the approach is, but the Web site of the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, names him as one of five finalists for the presidency of that institution, so maybe that's it.
I don't know a lot about what Mr. Hull accomplished strictly within the confines of Union College, but I do know he made a big difference in the surrounding city of Schenectady.
He bought on behalf of the college several blocks of dilapidated houses on one side of the campus, on Seward Place, and rehabbed them at great expense for student housing, so they are now an asset rather than an eyesore.
To be sure, this was not entirely altruistic but was intended to make the college itself more attractive to prospective students, as he acknowledged in our conversation, but it was a great esthetic boost for the city.
He created a tutoring center at the edge of the campus where local schoolchildren can come for academic help from college students, and last year college students provided 14,000 hours of such tutoring.
Along with retired GE executive Walt Robb, he set up a business incubator across the street from the campus, where small startup businesses, whether created by students or not, can rent space for nominal amounts and try to get their legs.
He was instrumental in creating Schenectady 2000, a volunteer effort to spruce up the city.
He was instrumental also in creating the Schenectady Metroplex Authority, a novel agency designed to funnel sales tax revenue into downtown redevelopment.
And if you get him going about what Schenectady needs, he will soon be talking, as he talked to me, about the problems inherent in having only a single rail line between Schenectady and Albany. Such a thing for a college president to worry about.
So he has done a lot to be proud of in his 15 years at Union College, but if you ask him what he is most proud of he will tell you it is having raised two sons as a single father these past 4 1 /2 years, and also of never having laid anyone off either at Union College or in his earlier presidency at Beloit College in Wisconsin, and what can you say about someone who takes pride in such accomplishments as those? Or about someone who could comfortably retire but instead looks forward to helping inner-city kids get a decent education? Not much that's bad.
If you would like to see and hear my conversation with Roger Hull, it will air tomorrow on Schenectady public access television, Channel 16, at 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m., and again on Sunday at 7:30 p.m.