Life After Presidency: Charles Paul Conn

Lee University's Chancellor Charles Paul Conn spent more than a decade as a professor and a freelance writer before becoming Lee University's longest serving president. Now, after a 34-year presidency, he is serving as the university’s first chancellor. Lee Clarion had a chance to sit with Conn and discuss the transition from president to chancellor.

What does a chancellor do?

“There's no definition for chancellor,” Conn said. “In many schools it’s the highest, the CEO … chancellor can mean anything.”

As Lee’s first chancellor, Dr. Conn serves on the president’s cabinet, maintains relationships with Cleveland locals and designs and executes special projects. Working with the president is part of the job, which Conn jokes was understood from the beginning.

“First of all, one of the tests in the presidential search will be if you can't get along with Conn, then you're not the guy for this job because we want him to stay and be the kind of the guiding presence,” Conn said.

“I talked [President Dr. Mark Walker] into leaving his pastor and coming to Lee, so that he would be in the environment for two or three years, prior to my resignation. So that he could decide ‘is this a place for me’ and so people could get accustomed to [him]. It was a very natural transition. I think the world of him and I've been very close to him personally. And we're very pleased by his choice.”

The biggest differences between President and Chancellor

“And I think the main thing is when you're president if you have a good idea, you can make it happen. When you're the chancellor if you have a good idea, you have to sell that idea. First to the president and then to others in order to make that happen. So I think that's what I miss most, being able to kind of move quickly to convert ideas into reality,” Conn said. “You can still convert ideas into reality as Chancellor, but you can't do as many of them and you can't do it as quickly, it requires more intermediate steps.”

As president, Conn agreed to do four last campus projects: fixing up the exterior of Mayfield Annex, the Stone Chapel, the Ray Conn Muti-sports Complex and a column barium. When he announced his retirement in 2019, only the Stone Chapel was completed.

“As I was leaving the president, they were negotiating my withdrawal and trying to keep me around and keep me involved,” Conn said. “I had projected this track and field complex, but we hadn't built it yet.”

Conn continued to oversee the building of the Ray Conn Multi-sports Complex, which opened in spring of 2021.

Now, the Mayfield Annex is getting an exterior upgrade, including new sidewalks, with an eye toward making it more appealing.

“Get those terrible looking plastic windows out of there and put some nice glass windows. Let's put a new roof on it. Let's make it look better, and I knew something needed to be going around Mayfield.”

The final project, the column barium is a repository for urns of ashes.

“[That’s] something I've had on my mind for years, and never got around to it as president, but I'd talked to the board about it and the board thought that’d be a cool idea,” Conn said.

The long-term plan

“[Lee University] asked me if I would do that for five years. I thought this through and we agreed on some ground rules. One ground rule was I wouldn't be assigned any task that I didn't agree to. I would do as little or much as I wanted,” Conn said.

As President, Conn spent time acquiring donations to build buildings across campus in toan effort to expand Lee University. 

“Thing I was the best known for, I guess in some ways, and all these donors giving at high levels, big dollar giving is so relationship based. So I continue to maintain and manage those relationships and trying to bring Dr. Walker.”

The donation process

The buildings on Lee’s campus bear the names of either donors or the people donors wanted honored through their giving.

Sharp-Davis Dorm is named for gifts honoring two families: Joe and May Sharp, pastors from Tennessee whose son attended Lee and gifted the money and Mr. Davis, a businessman from Greenville.

“His daughter and son-in-law gave us the lead gift on the building. That was a million-dollar gift,” Conn said.

One major donor, Rich DeVos, came as a result of Conn’s work as a freelance writer. The donation for the Humanities Center came from DeVos, but he did not want his name on the building.

“Everybody refers to the Humanities Center, but if you go in and look, it's actually the Rich DeVos Humanities Center. We never use that full name anymore because he asked us not to.” 

Although many donations came from previous contacts Dr. Conn made as a freelance writer or with his connections in Cleveland, “people are encouraged by the giving of other people,” he said.

“It's not that they're all ego-maniacs,” Conn said. He explained seeing people’s names attached to donations may prompt others to give, because they see the significant gifts already given by people they may know. He said people sometimes don’t want their names on building but he frequently tells potential donors: “‘Well, let me put your name. It may not stroke your ego, but it helps me send the signal that significant people are providing significant support for Lee University.’”

Changes inside and outside the office

Moving to chancellor also moved Conn from the President’s Office in the Vest Building to a new office on the second floor of Dixon Center.

“It's a much smaller team,” Conn said. “That's a big change because over at the president's office there’s constant traffic in and out … eight people working whereas it's just Steph [Taylor] and me and one student worker. It's quieter and that's not bad, that's a good change.”

Conn said the change does allow him to better focus on the projects before him.

“Don’t let the urgent crowd out the significant or the important, that happens in the President’s office. You can come in early Monday morning and work until late Saturday and look back and realize you didn’t really do anything that’s creating the university, that’s significant.”

What does Lee mean to you?

“It's the place where the added value happens all the time, and that's what we meant when we coined that expression we use so often ‘expect something great.’