Big Man on Campus - Moravian College

A View from the Top
A Conversation with Moravian’s New President
Christopher M. Thomforde assumed the presidency of
Moravian College and Moravian Theological Seminary
on August 1, 2006, succeeding Ervin J. Rokke. The
institution’s 15th president earned a Bachelor of Arts
degree in medieval and Russian history from Princeton
University in 1969, a Master of Divinity from Yale Univer-
sity Divinity School in 1974, and a Doctor of Ministry from
Princeton Theological Seminary in 2000. He is an ordained
minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Thomforde had a varied career before coming to Mora-
vian. He was an outstanding basketball player at Princ-
eton, and was drafted by, although he did not have a career
with, the New York Knickerbockers. After graduating from
Princeton and taking intensive courses in <strong>Man</strong>darin Chinese
at Middlebury College, he taught Western languages and
medieval European history at Tunghai University, Taichung,
Taiwan, until 1971. From 1974 to 1978, he was an assis-
tant chaplain and instructor in philosophy and religion at
Colgate University. From 1978 to 1986, he served as pastor
at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Dansville, New York. From
1986 to 1996, Thomforde served as chaplain at Susquehanna
University and taught in the Department of Philosophy and
Religion. From there he embarked on a presidential career,
becoming president of Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas,
where he served from 1996 to 2000, and then president of St.
Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, serving from 2000 to
2006.
The editors of Moravian College Magazine recently sat
down with Moravian’s new president and invited him to
talk about his role and the institution’s future.
What made you want to come to Moravian?
A couple of things. One, the school is in a good position;
it has a good sense of positive energy about itself. You don’t
always get a breathing space at a small liberal arts college to
consider the institution’s strengths and to ask how it could
become stronger, but the work of all of you—Dr. Rokke, the
administration, the faculty, the board—has helped the school
gain a kind of stability in which we can consider where we
go from here. Second, I sort of grew up in the eastern part of
the United States, and I have family here, so the opportunity
to come “home” was very attractive to me also.
Last fall I conducted the funeral service for the wife of
my old friend Peter Carril, Princeton’s former basketball
coach. After the service was over I talked with Pete and
with Bill Werpehowski of Moravian’s class of ’51. Bill, who
grew up with Pete on Bethlehem’s South Side, over on 3rd
Street, said, “Chris, you should really think about coming
to Moravian. Our president is retiring, and I think you’d be
great there.” So it was the Carril-Werpehowski axis that got
me interested.
With both you and your predecessor, Ervin Rokke,
Moravian’s been lucky in getting a president who has
had previous experience as a president. What have you
learned in your previous presidential experience, both
from mistakes and from successes, that will help you be
a better president at Moravian?
Probably more from the mistakes! I would say one
thing is that I bring with me from all of my professional
experience an appreciation for the great value of our
country’s small liberal arts colleges. I also bring a sense of
how fragile they are. They are very tuititon-dependent, so
they can be in real trouble in a hurry if enrollment growth
slows, because they don’t have a lot of other resources. So
they’re very fragile, but they’re very valuable, and because
they’re valuable, any effort put into making them more
stable, more viable, is worth it because of the great benefit
they have on the lives of students, in thinking, in profes-
sional training, and in moral character development.
I think, since I’ve seen a lot of how three other schools
work—Susquehanna, where I was the chaplain, Bethany
and St. Olaf where I was president, and now here, so this is
the fourth school like this—there are not too many things
that would surprise me. I feel more mature, frankly, as a
leader of a small liberal arts institution now than I did at
any of the previous three places where I worked. I think
having a leader who doesn’t panic or get too anxious or too
fidgety is probably good for everybody. Maybe part of that
maturity is knowing what things are really worth worry-
ing about, and what are the daily trials and tribulations of
small academic communities. And not taking either myself
or the problems that we might face too seriously is helpful
for a more steady kind of leadership.
12 MORAVIAN COLLEGE MAGAZINE WINTER 2007
photo by John Kish iV
>
WINTER 2007 MORAVIAN COLLEGE MAGAZINE 13