While Creighton University President Rev. Timothy R. Lannon, S. J.’s announcement that he plans to step down at the end of the 2015 academic year did not come completely out of the blue, considering Lannon’s recent health scare, it left many students and faculty wondering what will come next for Creighton.
Lannon’s tenure as president has left a significant impact on my time at Creighton. My class, the Creighton class of 2015, will be the only one that has been at Creighton for Lannon’s full tenure. To say that Lannon has affected my time at Creighton would be an understatement: Lannon’s leadership has made my Creighton experience. The question now is, what kind of legacy will Lannon leave at Creighton?
The answer is far from a simple one—after all, Lannon still has 15 months left before he leaves the president’s office for good. Additionally, with only four years in office under his belt, only time will tell if Lannon’s policies have changed Creighton for the better.
Nonetheless, change is something that will define Lannon’s time at Creighton. Have there ever been so many profound changes over such a short period of time at the university?
Lannon oversaw Creighton’s move to the Big East conference, the Medical Center’s merger with Alegent Health, the reveal of the Heider College of Business and the beginning stages of the implementation of the university’s new strategic plan.
One might argue that Lannon leapt too quickly towards change; he might have been too eager to grow the university without thinking how to best implement his changes at a reasonable rate. Lannon’s successor will have a tough time finding ways to practically implement Lannon’s ideas and to continue to grow Creighton into a university that can compete on a national stage, while still staying true to its small, liberal arts and Midwestern roots.
Whatever one might think about Lannon’s policies, he did sincerely want to leave the university better off than when he started. Lannon’s status as the first Creighton alumnus to lead the university as president gave him a unique perspective on what it was exactly that made Creighton so special. As Lannon said in an email to students, “It [Creighton] was home to me when I was a student, and it is home to me today.”
His enthusiasm for Creighton clearly showed on the job; many Creighton students can eagerly tell you about the times that Lannon greeted them on the mall or came and spoke to their organizations.
The number of tweets that poured in from students moments after his announcement, thanking him for his service to the university and wishing him well shows that, at the very least, Lannon managed to touch some portion of the student body during his time at Creighton. This can be difficult to do in such an impersonal job as president of a university with more than 7,000 students.
In spite of all the big changes Lannon strove to make at the university, I think that his best decision was to step down when he did. He recognized that his health complications were putting him in danger of not being able to perform his job to the fullest. He gave ample notice to allow the university to find an appropriate successor and to continue to work to implement his plans for the university. He showed his dedication to Creighton not just by deciding to leave Creighton, but by deciding how not to leave.
The reality is that Lannon’s time at Creighton thus far has been fairly uneventful, in the sense that he hasn’t had many extreme crises or scandals to deal with. It will be hard to find faults with his tenure when he will be leaving before some of his plans are fully implemented.
But Lannon’s legacy at Creighton will be defined by the fact that he is a man that deeply cares about his university. He strove to constantly find ways to improve Creighton’s academics, athletics and life for the student body as a whole. To be a good leader, having passion for whatever you’re doing is something that is not just encouraged, but is necessary. In regards to that area, Lannon has been a phenomenal president.