Michael Bassis: putting students first.

• Author: Bjorklund, Todd
• Position: People - Westminster College - Biography

It's a surprise to learn that Westminister College's new president, Dr. Michael Bassis, once flunked out of college. After attending one of New England's traditional, all-male boarding schools, he went to Brown University. There, he says, "I discovered this new species of human being that I was fascinated by, so I spent the better part of my first year learning what these creatures were all about and didn't bother to go to class very often."

After flunking Out, he ventured to New York City and worked on Wall Street for a year. He realized that the financial world was not for him, so he applied for readmission to Brown, from this inauspicious start, Bassis went on to earn a doctorate in the Sociology of Education from the University of Chicago. He says he chose academia because "I had a number of powerful educational experiences as a student that had a huge impact on the way I thought. I was taken with education's capacity to transform people's lives," After 10 years as a professor, Bassis became a school administrator. "It enabled me to have a much more direct impact on the educational climate, more so than as a faculty member," he says. It also allowed him to apply what he had spent his career researching and teaching. He has since held administrative positions of increasing responsibility at a number of colleges and universities, most recently as president of New College of Florida.

Calling the presidency of Westminster the "capstone" of his career, Bassis accepted the position because, although the Board of Trustees expressed pride in what the college has accomplished over the last 10 years, they...