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This profile is part of a series of conversations with college presidents in various higher education institutions. Earlier conversations in this series were with Adam Weinberg, president of Denison University in Ohio; Katherine Persson, president of Lone Star College-Kingwood in Texas; Katrina Rogers, president of Fielding Graduate University, based in Santa Barbara; and Paul Pribbenow, president of Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

In recent years, Kettering has brought together a series of research exchanges with college presidents on the civic purposes of higher education. In these exchanges, we discovered that presidents are deeply concerned with the state of our democracy and anxious to expand their leadership roles beyond fundraising and bureaucratic administration.

Jay Theis had a newly minted doctorate in political science when he became concerned about the fate of a Methodist church that was closing across the street from his Kansas City home.