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Greensboro College has a new interim president, following a spring and summer of financial uncertainty that brought the historic liberal arts school to the brink of bankruptcy.

C. Brent DeVore, 68, who retired two months ago from a long career as president of Otterbein College in Ohio, was appointed until the school finds a permanent replacement.

DeVore said he will serve while a search committee seeks to replace Craven Williams, who retired in July as the school’s financial problems mounted.

In announcing the appointment to faculty and students, Board of Trustees Chairman R. Carter Pate said Friday that the school had stabilized its finances. It has cut accounts payable by half, corrected cash flow problems and reduced part of the school’s debt.

Greensboro College hopes for a stabilizing presence while it finds a long-term leader. During DeVore’s 25-year career at Otterbein, the Methodist-affiliated college’s enrollment doubled in size to about 3,000 students, and its endowment swelled to $57 million.

“The key is having somebody here on campus with the skills in that position,” said Walter Newton, the trustee leading the search. “He came right to the top (of the list of candidates) and was willing to take this on. This gives us time for the permanent search.”

DeVore, who visited Greensboro College three times prior to his appointment this week, holds a Ph.D. from Kent State and closed his career at a time when Otterbein received a rare honor for a school its size: an award from the White House for general community service.

In a broad-ranging interview prior to his introduction to students Friday morning, DeVore warmed to the topic of the liberal arts mission at Greensboro College. Yet he seemed hard-pressed to define what, if any, niche the 1,200-student campus has so far carved out.

As in central Ohio, where there were six college campuses within 20 minutes of each other, Greensboro College finds itself in what he called a “competitive situation.” 

“Someplace along the line there has to be a competitive advantage that’s developed over a period of time,” DeVore said. “It need not be the physical campus. It might be the relationship between the faculty and the students.”
 

DeVore said that he is not beginning his interim tenure with a set agenda but that he will place a premium on openness and on listening to faculty, staff and students.

“There is no hierarchy of ideas on a college campus,” DeVore said. “Sometimes, the best ideas come from students.”

A major criticism of Williams, both on the part of the campus community and trustees, was that there were no signals that the school was in financial trouble until the college was all but unable to make payroll and meet its utility payments.

After the college was forced to cut staff and faculty pay and benefits last spring and secure its line of credit by putting its campus up as collateral, Williams announced his retirement and Board of Trustees Chairman Robert Stout stepped down.
The relatively large board — 32 trustees in all — had played a more laissez-faire role.

That changed when the “alarm” sounded, said current board Chairman Pate, a Greensboro College alum and managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global accounting giant.

“We would have had meetings twice a year, spring and fall, and financial reports lasting five minutes,” Pate said. “Now, we have an executive committee including myself that meets every two weeks, with phone calls that go on an hour and a half.”
As difficult as the previous months have been for the school, fellow trustee and alum Candace L. Kime said DeVore’s role will be to restore good relations.

“What we want in Dr. DeVore is transparency and accountability — not just to the campus community, but to the community as a whole,” Kime said.

“The college has been part of the fabric of Greensboro for 171 years. We want to maintain that good feeling.”

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com