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GREENSBORO — Who will be the next president of Greensboro College?

That’s the question trustees, faculty, alumni, staff and students spent the past three days trying to answer as they interviewed three finalists for the job: Christopher Holoman, Lawrence Czarda and Harley Knowles.

The college’s presidential search committee plans to make a recommendation to the trustees within a couple of weeks, said committee chairman Walter Newton.
To learn more about the candidates, visit www.greensborocollege.edu, and click on “presidential search.”

Here’s some of who they are and their background.

Christopher Holoman

Current job: provost and vice president for academic affairs at Hilbert College in Hamburg, N.Y.

Family: wife, Connie; two daughters

Hobbies: cooking and traveling

Holoman said the Greensboro College presidency is a calling.

He was raised in Raleigh and attended UNC-Chapel Hill and is a lifelong United Methodist.

“The college that I’m at now, Hilbert, is very similar to Greensboro in many ways,” Holoman said. “It’s about the same size. It has some of the same financial issues, although it hasn’t passed through the crisis that Greensboro has.”

Holoman is second in command at Hilbert, overseeing academics. He said he tries to be a collaborative leader.

“I’m good at articulating a vision. I can let people know where I think we need to be going, and I’m a strong believer in, 'Put the right people in positions and you let them do their job.’ ”

Holoman said another of his character traits — telling good stories — comes in handy with fundraising.

“I’m a very effective storyteller, and in some ways that’s what fundraising is,” he said. “We need to be able to tell Greensboro’s story in the community to prospective students, to funders, to foundations, and create a sense of excitement. And we can do that.”

One program Holoman helped implement at Hilbert is the foundation seminar course, which he said addresses student retention. The required freshman course helps students get to know one another and become integrated into campus life.

To recruit and retain students at Greensboro College, the college needs to determine what it can do best, he said. And not just within itself, but in the Triad, state and Southeast.

Helping a college stand out in a competitive environment is a challenge Holoman is familiar with. In western New York, there are 22 other colleges and universities, he said.

“Enrollment management is a science now and ... you don’t just send out your view book. You don’t just go to high school fairs and hope that the applications roll in, and then the students come.”

Student retention, in some respects, is even more important, Holoman said.

“You need to be kind of up in a student’s face a little bit. 'Why aren’t you going to class?’ If we can’t take advantage of that as a small school — that we do in fact know the individual students and when they’re not in class, we find them on the Quad and say, 'I missed you in class today’ — we’re not helping in retention, and we’re not using the built-in advantage we have.”

Lawrence Czarda

Current job: vice president for administration, George Mason University

Family: wife, Carolyn; seven children, six grandchildren

Hobbies: time with family, traveling, arts and athletics

Czarda initially thought wearing his George Mason pin to his interview at Greensboro College would be a bad idea. But then he reconsidered.

“You wear the role 24-7. I understand these jobs. I understand what it takes,” he said.

Czarda has spent 26 years in various positions at George Mason, including associate vice president for finance and planning, chief of staff and vice president for regional campuses. He was a finalist last year for president at Florida International University.

Greensboro College struck a chord with him. “I was formed, I was molded by a 900-student, church-related, small, private liberal arts college,” Czarda said of Bridgewater College, where he did his undergraduate studies.

Czarda said his background in finance and strategic planning has helped him discern when there’s hope and when it’s time to give up.

There’s hope for Greensboro College, he said.

“This is going to be better than ever,” he said of the school. “It’s going to take some hard work. There’s some heavy lifting here, but despite some of the really difficult news of the last year, the bones are good. This is going to be a real success story, and I’d love to be the one that gets at least partial credit for doing that.”

Harley Knowles

Current job: vice president for institutional advancement, University of New England in Biddeford and Portland, Maine

Family: wife, Cindy

Hobbies: running, reading, landscape painting

Before coming to the University of New England, Knowles was vice president for development at Shenandoah University. He led a $65 million fundraising campaign to build new facilities and increase the school’s endowment.

“We wanted to move it to a new level of excellence, a new level of competitiveness,” Knowles said. “In order to move it there, we knew we needed some things. We needed a new student center. We needed a new business building, we needed a new communications building and a variety of other facilities.

“We also needed to put a lot more money in the endowment to make sure that we had scholarships for our students so that we could attract and retain some of the best students.”

In the short time he’s spent on campus, Knowles said he’s seen that Greensboro College has what it takes for him to do the same thing here.

“What I’m excited to learn is that the faculty and staff and students here are very committed to this institution and that’s very, very important,” he said. “We need to continue to increase our enrollment and spread the good news of the tremendous value and the great educational experience we provide our students. We need to share that with more and more people.”

Knowles has a background in enrollment management, he said, particularly in helping students be more successful. As vice president for student affairs at Shenandoah, Knowles led some initiatives he said raised the school’s retention rate about 10 percent.

He and his team identified reasons why students were dropping out and addressed them.

For example, some students didn’t have the best study skills, so the university implemented a freshman year experience class that taught study techniques.

Another problem was that students were having problems getting to know one another. Shenandoah created a 10- to 11-day orientation to help students foster significant relationships.

“You’ve got to build a sense of connection and community, and if you do, people will tend to stay.”

Contact Jonnelle Davis at 373-7080 or jonnelle.davis@news-record.com