Lawyer Robert N. Funk Made a Career of Serving as an Interim President at Four Institutions

Colleges and Universities turn to interim president appointments when there is an unexpected departure of the president creating an urgent need to identify someone quickly who can lead and manage the institution. Sometimes, while the campus then engages in a national search to find a new leader, the community may develop a comfort with the interim leader they know, and it is not uncommon for that person to be appointed to the post permanently (when they are candidate for the position).

Lawyer Robert N. Funk served as interim president of four different schools following a successful nine-year presidency at Cornish College of the Arts (1985-1994). When he was retiring from Cornish College, Funk placed his name on a registry of former higher education officials interested in working as interim presidents or deans.

Funk was subsequently named interim president at Sierra Nevada Collee in 1995, St. Edwards University in 1998, Villa Julie College (now Stevenson University) in 1999 and Hood College in 2000. Funk stayed at Hood College upon the appointment of a new president in 2001, serving as dean of the faculty and later as provost. In 2010 he left for an interim vice president of academic affairs position at Gwynedd-Mercy College.

In total, 74 known lawyers served as interim presidents of a college or university. Twenty-seven of these interim lawyer presidents were subsequently appointed as presidents at the campus where they served as interim. Eight of the interim lawyer presidents left those campuses to become president somewhere else.

Prior to his run as president and successive interim presidencies, Robert Funk was an academic vice president and dean at Stephens College and held both faculty and administrative positions at Stanford University. In addition to a JD degree from the University at Oregon, Funk earned a PhD in higher education administration from Stanford University. Before embarking on a career in higher education, Funk served in the military in both the counterintelligence corps and the Judge Advocates General Corps of the U.S. Army. He also worked in private practice as an attorney in Pendleton, OR.

For a more information on May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education, see https://lawyersleadinghighered.com

Long-time High Ed Leader and Lawyer W. Ellis Arnold III Announces Retirement as President of Hendrix

W. Ellis Arnold III ’79, elected the 12th President of Hendrix College (Conway, Arkansas) in November 2019 (taking office in December 2019), announced his retirement in June 2023. He previously served as president of Lambuth University in Jackson, TN. Both colleges are affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

Discussed in more detail in May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education, about 27% of the presidents of religiously affiliated colleges and universities in the last decade are lawyers. The number of lawyer presidents at religiously affiliated schools tripled from the 1990s to the 2000s, and more than doubled from the 2000s to the 2010s. There are many reasons for this upward trend, not the least of which is the delicate balance of compliance with federal and state regulations and the desire in some cases to hold to conflicting deeply held religious values and beliefs.

During a November 9, 2022 presentation sponsored by the Steel Center at Hendrix College, President Arnold, he described how he was recruited to Hendrix as a career move in 1990. Following his graduation from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law in 1982, he practiced law in Little Rock. Then-Hendrix President Dr. Joe B. Hatcher asked Arnold to serve as Vice President for Development and College Relations and lead the College’s church relations, communications, fundraising, and marketing, in addition to serving as General Counsel. Within a year of his arrival on campus (at age 33), President Hatcher announced he was leaving. When Ellis Arnold left to go to Lambuth University – he felt what that school articulated that it needed – he had. He has also served as acting president of Hendrix on two occasions.

President Arnold finished $150M campaign and the endowment soared to record levels of over $230M before he announced he was stepping down. The two things that were most important to him were the faculty and the residential experience for the students. When asked what his favorite role was – he said his first one working with President Hatcher – he never felt he was going to work a single day. He also noted that when the Associated Colleges of the South invited them join and then the National Collegiate Athletic Association invited Hendrix as well, these were game changers to help equate Hendrix with other quality liberal arts schools, helping them to recruit more regionally.

President Arnold’s retirement next year will conclude a successful 33-year career in education leadership, including 17 years as a President.

First Lawyer President in the Country Noted for Legal Acumen, Integrity, Vigor and Devotion

Founded in 1636, when Harvard College appointed John Leverett (1662-1724) as President in 1707 he became the first lawyer and first jurist to occupy the leadership position at Harvard.

Harvard’s 29th President, also a lawyer, Lawrence S. Bacow, announced he will be stepping down in June 2023. Other lawyer presidents who served at Harvard include: Josiah Quincy III (1829-1845); Lawrence Lowell (1909-1933) and Derek Bok (1971-1999; 2006-2007).

Prior to his presidency, Leverett had been appointed as a Harvard Tutor in 1685. He was also an attorney, a judge (justice of the peace, judge in the Court of Admiralty, justice of the Superior Court, Judge of the Probate Court for Middlesex County) and he served for six years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the last of which he was the Speaker of the House. According to his papers on file with the Harvard archives, Leverett acted as an Indian commissioner from Massachusetts and attended a 1704 conference to try to persuade the Iroquois to join the Queen Anne’s War (1701-1713) on the side of the British (he was not successful). He served a lieutenant in the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and later as an emissary of Governor Joseph Dudley (MA) to negotiate with Governor John Lovelace (NY) to establish military cooperation on the frontier and for an invasion of Canada.

A published account of the 1707 inauguration of Leverett states:

Mr. John Leverett was Installed in his President’s Office at Cambridge January 14, 1707/8. The Governour and Council and Ministers of the six neighbouring Towns were in the Library; there were the Colledge Charter, Records, Laws, with a seal standing upon them; also the Colledge Keys. Many people were in the Hall below, in the middle of the Hall a Table was set for the Governour and Council to sit at; things being thus prepared, the Governour ordered the Library Keeper to carry down (under his right arm) the Colledge Charter, Books of Record and Laws and the Seal upon them; he ordered the Butler to carry down the Keys in his left hand: then the Governour took Mr. Leveret by the hand, led him out of the Library, after the Books and Keys down into the Hall, where the Books, seal, Keys were laid on the table in the middle of the Hall. The Governour sat down on one side of the Table, and Mr. Leverett over against him; the Council and Mr. Hubbard of New Cambridge also sat at the Table. Then Mr. Hubbard began with a very serious suitable prayer, he being ended, Sir Sewal made an oration in Latin; nextly the Governour made a Speech in Latin, to Mr. Leveret more especially, declaring how the Corporation had chosen him, the Governour and Council approved him, the General Court voted him a salary; so he invested him in his office, pointing to the Books, Seal, Keys on the Table, which he delivered to him as ensigns of his office power. After this, Mr.Leveret made a short speech in Latin to the Governour, then Sir Holyoke made an oration in Latin. In the next place, Mr. Danforth Minister of Dorchester went to prayer; in the last place, part of the 132 psalme was sung, and then the affair was ended. After the business was thus over, they went to dinner in the Hall, and then every one went his way.

According to the Harvard archives: His major accomplishment as president was to help transform Harvard from a divinity school to a more secular institution. When he assumed responsibility together with William Brattle for management of the school when Preisdent Increase Mather left for England in 1688, Leverett and Brattle added the reading of Anglican authors to the curriculum. “As a leader in the Congregational Church, Leverett opposed Increase and Cotton Mather's attempts to impose a new charter containing a loyalty oath which would require faculty members to acknowledge the primacy of scripture. His secular direction prompted Thomas Hollis (1659-1731), a London merchant and devout Baptist to make several generous donations to Harvard. Under Leverett's stewardship, school enrollment expanded, bequests were collected, and Massachusetts Hall was erected (1720). Leverett's autocratic governing style created conflict with College Tutors in the late 1710s and early 1720s that expanded into larger difficulties with conservative members of the Harvard Board of Overseers and the Massachusetts General Court.” Leverett also added the study of Hebrew and French into the curriculum. Leverett died in office in 1724.

With respect to his leadership, the Harvard archives concludes, “John Leverett was noted for being a widely cultivated and broad-minded person. His experience as lawyer, jurist, and politician helped maintain Harvard College's standing during his critical years as president. Leverett brought vigor, integrity, and devotion to the Harvard presidency.” He was the first lawyer president of any institution of higher education dating back to the Colonial Era, and although he was not the first president, Harvard recognized the valuable legal acumen that he brought to the office. Other descriptors, vigor, integrity, and devotion, while certainly not unique to lawyer presidents, are indeed all critically important attributes of a campus leader.