After serving as Associate and Academic Dean for eight years, Dr. Linda Mills Woolsey has decided the time has come for her to leave the office.
Through her time as Department chair and in the CCCU leadership development program, Mills Woolsey entered her role as Dean with the necessary leadership experience and skills. Yet the office of Dean was not something she was seeking. When encouraged to apply to the CCCU leadership development program, Mills Woolsey said at the time, “I have no intention of being a Dean,” even noting on the application “I don’t feel I have a calling.” She felt a deep calling to teaching, and had teaching positions at Nyack, King, and most recently, Houghton College.
A phone call from President Mullen several years later changed her course. “She wanted to have an Associate Dean who knew the college,” Mills Woolsey remembers. She thought and prayed. “I thought, if I’m needed three years I should consider it. I said ‘yes.’” She moved on to become Academic Dean from there. Mullen noted, “After doing a national search we didn’t find a candidate. We realized our best available candidate was right here among us.”
Mullen says now, “Dr. Mills Woolsey has been exactly the right person to be in the position at this time.” Her husband, Dr. Stephen Woolsey, noted her strengths in the position. “She loves to problem solve and help people find resources.” He described her also as “absolutely fair minded,” an important quality in an office where you must “support equally all parts of the college.”
Although Mullen and Mills Woolsey herself noted her years of office have occurred during a “a time of great turbulence in American higher education,” Mullen asserts “in general she has helped to move our academic program forward.” Mills Woolsey has brought about the new fields of music industry, data science, and the beginnings of an engineering program, as well as “creating the academic master plan for Houghton’s future development and curriculum.” Mullen says additionally “she strengthened our connection with the Lilly network of historically faith based colleges as well as such groups as the AAC&U.”
After eight years in office, the average being five as Dean, Woolsey noted she is ready to go back to teaching. She expressed “very mixed feelings about leaving the Dean’s office,” but explained also she was “pretty burned out” by last spring. “I thought I’d only be a Dean for a short time. I didn’t pace myself.” She is stepping down from the position after prayer about timing, in hopes of finishing her career with her “first love,” teaching. “After all these years, that’s what I’m really excited about,” she says. She hopes as well to finish a book manuscript of her poetry, which she has not had time to devote to while serving as Dean.
Mills Woolsey will end her term as Dean by summer 2016. While a new Dean has yet to be found, Mullen says “We’re in the process of looking for a new Dean at this point” and when a decision is made, “we’ll certainly let the student body know.” “Dean Woolsey has decided that this is the right time to leave, so we need to make it the right time for the institution.” She looks on Dr. Mills Woolsey’s term as Dean as “a testimony to her love of faculty and students,” which Woolsey herself expressed. “Even though I love teaching I saw the calling as a chance to serve Houghton students and faculty,” she said, noting the dedication of Houghton faculty and the “energy and intensity” of the students.