President Gerald T. Brouder: Up for the Challenge
By Laura Daugherty
Ideas are essential to
the human experience. Without them, knowledge couldn’t be transferred and
applied, and revelations would never occur. But growing an idea into tangible
reality takes more than just a thought; in many instances, it takes hard work, dedication
and discipline. Dr. Gerald T. Brouder’s career can be summed up as the culmination
of many ideas — ideas that, with a lot of hard work, became reality.
Dr. Brouder’s foray into higher
education was not his original plan, although serving others has remained a
career constant. After graduating high school he joined the military with an
eventual plan to become a highway patrolman.
“It grew me up,” he says of his experience
in the Army. “I became a much more disciplined individual than I was going in.
It taught me how to stay on point, and to treat those subordinate to you in a
way that is respectful and in a way that is helpful.”
"Honesty and integrity have guided me. In all that I've done I've attempted to be honest about it and tried to impose the greatest of integrity."
Brouder served in the medical
corps in the Army and, once his duties were fulfilled, went to work in an operating
room at a children’s hospital in Chicago. He explains a series of “epiphanies”
led him to steadily build his educational credentials in the nursing field. He
first obtained his associate’s degree, then his bachelor’s and master’s
degrees.
“I knew if I went on further with
my education, I could make a better life for myself,” he said. “And with the master’s
degree, I knew I could do any of three things: practice, research and teach.
That got me off into the teaching venue.”
With the idea in mind that
pursuing higher education would lead to more open doors, Brouder came to his
next opportunity almost by happenstance. “There was a tear-off ad in the Rush Memorial
Hospital where I worked that talked about a Ph.D. program in nursing at the
University of Texas,” he says. “I pulled it off and sent it in for more information
and that got the ball rolling. By that time, I was married and had two kids, so
Bonnie and I decided to give it a try. We threw all the kids and everything in
the truck and drove down to Austin and, as they say, the rest is history.”
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| Dr. Gerald T. Brouder and Mrs. Bonnie M. Brouder |
At the University of Texas,
Brouder met Dr. Bruce Rouse who served as the chairman of Brouder’s
dissertation committee. Brouder explains working with Rouse had a tremendous
impact on his professional development. “He really had me on a glide path that was
bound to succeed, even when I doubted myself,” Brouder says. “He saw something
in me that was going to blossom at some point. While I didn’t agree with him
necessarily, especially after some exams,” he says with a laugh, “he had a
great, great influence on my life.”
In 1977, Brouder was hired as a
faculty member in the School of Nursing at the University of Missouri. He spent
17 years at the university and served as interim chancellor, deputy chancellor and
provost. He also held other various positions within the administration and at
the medical center.
When asked what
intrigued him about becoming the 16th president of Columbia College in 1995,
Brouder’s answer is unwavering. “The impression I had was there was an enormous
challenge. Bonnie and I discussed it quite awhile and decided we were up for
the challenge and went ahead and signed on.”
In his inaugural
address, Brouder cited three major goals for the institution: increasing the
endowment, advancing technology and deepening and strengthening the sciences.
Eighteen years later, his ideas have become reality: the endowment has
increased to over $110 million, the department of technology services has grown
from four employees to 44, and a brand new, 52,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art
science building will open this fall on the main campus.
Brouder also realized
early on the importance of cultivating a culture at the college that honored
civility and respect, explaining a qualitative shift among faculty and students
had to take place.
“When I got here we
had open admissions, and it became clear to me early on that that wasn’t going
to work, not if we wanted to establish a quality institution to which students would
aspire to come,” he says. “One of the things we did was impose admission
standards in our Day and Evening campuses. You had to have an ACT, you had to
have a class rank, and you had to have a GPA out of high school, and you had to
meet other criteria
at the institution. So at the very same time
we were improving the quality of faculty, we
were improving the quality of the students
that they would teach. That resulted in a major shift in the organization.”
"I'm proud of the culture we have formed at this institution. It relates to the principles of civility and respect. We've inculcated those principles in all of our students, faculty and staff."
The shift in culture is evident
everywhere on campus. “We respect teaching and learning,” he says. “You can see
it in the quality of the teachers we hire; you can see it in the grounds. The
sidewalks are edged, the flowers are beautiful … that’s not to spend money on
horticulture, that’s to show people you respect the venue in which that awesome
responsibility takes place where teaching turns into learning. You’ve got to
honor the fact that what we do is grow intellects. We change people’s lives.
It’s an awesome responsibility.”
He explains how teaching is transferred
into tangible learning: “I’m a fan of the analogy of the hammer and the anvil.
When you strike the anvil, something occurs: there is a spark. That’s what I
view as teaching turning into learning. That spark is the transfer of
knowledge. We are about the transfer of knowledge, and we are about the
expansion of knowledge.”
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| With overwhelming support, the Columbia College Board of Trustees approved the naming of the new science building to be the Gerald T. and Bonnie M. Brouder Science Center - a fitting tribute to a president and first lady who first prioritized the expansion of science education 18 years ago. |
Although Brouder is proud to see
his initial ideas regarding the institution come to fruition, he’s quick to
deflect praise. “It’s the good people you hire that make the operation work,”
he says. “By virtue of the good people I have hired in my career who make
everything happen, we have been quite successful.”
Brouder has high hopes for the
college to soon become a model institution. “How do you know when that vision is
realized?” he asks. “It happens when others come to us and say, ‘How did you do
this? How did you develop that?’ The other is when we get accolades from
outside the institution — U.S. News and World Report, The Princeton
Review, GetEducated.com — all of those things, that’s validation that this
hybrid that we’ve created here is something others emulate or want to emulate.”
In retirement, Brouder hopes to volunteer
in the health arena and as chairman of the board of directors at Fr. Tolton
Catholic High School in Columbia, Mo. “I’m going to play a little tennis, a
little golf … but I’m going to do something that has value, to perhaps give
back a little.”
“I’ll miss it,” he says of
Columbia College. “I’ll miss the people, I’ll miss the opportunity, I’ll miss
the challenge. I set out goals 18 years ago and, I think, achieved them. If I
could be remembered for sticking to the vision and succeeding, I think I’ll be happy.”
