A New Presidency: Week 1

Dr. D. Michael Lindsay, eighth president of Gordon College, is hitting the ground listening during his first official week on the job. During the next few days he will convene a number of “listening sessions” with groups of faculty and staff members to gain a better picture of what goes on at Gordon 9–5. He is especially looking forward, of course, to the return of the Gordon student body for the 2011–12 academic year.

Dr. Lindsay’s keen interest in mentoring students has been evident throughout his career at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where from 2006–2011 he was on the sociology faculty, directed the Program for the Study of Leadership and was a Rice Scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Under his direction the Program for the Study of Leadership launched a successful series of “leadership salons” in which national leaders interacted with Rice undergraduates in conversations on current topics.

While at Rice, Dr. Lindsay worked with teams of research assistants including undergraduates, graduate students, and postbaccalaureate research fellows. He was delighted to see several recent undergraduate assistants apply and be accepted to top graduate programs at Yale, Stanford, Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley.

“Inspiring students is primary on my inaugural-year agenda,” Lindsay says. “By creating a new narrative with them—a new chapter, if you will, that is both personal and institutional—we will help students imagine greater responses to daily and corporate challenges. By bridging academic insights with biblical wisdom, we will continue to introduce them to the wonders of learning, the joys of creativity and innovation, and the immeasurable value of Christian character in an unpredictable world.”  

A graduate of Baylor University, Lindsay also holds graduate degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University and worked with the George H. Gallup International Institute. Recently Rice's junior and senior class named Lindsay a favorite professor, bestowing upon him Rice's oldest teaching award: the Nicolas Salgo Distinguished Teacher Award.

In addition to his teaching experience and administrative leadership, Lindsay is the author of two dozen publications, including scholarly articles in the top journals of three different fields as well as the award-winning book Faith in the Halls of Power, nominated by Oxford University Press for the nonfiction Pulitzer Prize.

“Lindsay exemplifies the next generation of leaders who are having a strong impact already on our culture,” says Herman Smith, Gordon alumnus, Board of Trustees member and chair of the Presidential Search Committee.

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