President Paul Sniegowski is in his first year at Earlham College. The Quaker map for Principles and Practices drew him to the work and will inform his tenure.
In August 2024, Paul Sniegowski arrived at Earlham College as its 21st president, bringing three decades of experience as a professor and dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Arts and Sciences. A native Hoosier returning to Indiana after years on the east coast, Sniegowski has embraced the opportunity to lead Earlham at a transformative and unique time. In this Q&A with Earlhamite magazine’s writer/editor Jay Kibble, the president reflects on his goals for the college.
You’re originally from Indiana.
I was born in Toledo, Ohio, but grew up in South Bend. We moved when I was about 2. It has, in fact, been a homecoming for me. Indiana feels familiar in all the ways. Prior to this I spent about 30 years out on the East Coast. Most folks on the east coast consider the Midwest to be flyover country, but if you’re a Midwesterner, you know that the beauties and the likes of the Midwest are there. They’re more subtle things. In addition, my mother turned 90 this year and still lives in South Bend. It’s nice to live closer to her and be able to buzz up to her occasionally.
What has it been like returning home to serve as Earlham’s 21st president?
It’s not just returning home, though, it’s also returning to serve Earlham. Our son, Ben, attended Earlham, and graduated in 2023. My whole life I’ve known about Earlham College. I’ve known people who attended here, and people who almost came here for a job, myself included, prior to accepting the presidency. In a way, it’s kind of a rounding off of a career, a sort of arrival somewhere, to me. I’m working very hard here as president, but I am a retired person. I retired as a professor of biology at Penn, so this job is not a stepping stone to something else for me. It’s something I want to do to serve a college I’ve always admired, as has my son and so many other people.
What was it about Earlham that drew you to the presidency?
There is, as I mentioned, the fact that the family is here in Indiana, that Ben attended here, and those are kind of part of the larger constellation of things that drew me to Earlham. As was the fact that I almost took a job here 20 years ago. I think the other element that I haven’t addressed, but that I believe in so deeply about Earlham, is its Quakerness. We don’t actually have that many Quakers on campus or in our faculty — including me. I’m not a Quaker. But our Principles and Practices that are our legacy from the Quaker founding of our College are things that have been meaningful to me throughout my life. At this particular point in my life, and to be honest, at this particular moment in the U.S. and in the world, the opportunity to serve a place that stands for those things like this place does was just an enormous attraction to me and a real draw.
You spent much of your career teaching in the sciences, but your academic background is quite diverse. How did that help you in your career?
There are commonalities to teaching in any subject. My first serious experience at teaching was teaching children to play the violin. I was a violinist and went to Indiana University Jacobs School of Music before I went to grad school in biology. For a while there, I made a living as a freelance music teacher while also taking classes because I knew I was going to eventually make the transfer over to biology. When I went on to Penn, one of the things I did almost every year was to teach one or more of the large intro to bio courses, and these are sometimes large classes, as many as 220 students. What I really cherished in those classes, in addition to trying to interact with the class in the classroom, I really cherished office hours and seeing the students who’d come to visit. Again, that’s that one-on-one approach. I really do trace that back to my experience teaching violin.
People might be surprised to know that you’re teaching this semester. How are you balancing the presidency with the demands of classroom teaching?
It’s a course I have taught before at Penn. It’s Biology 205, an introduction to evolution. You don’t have to be a biologist to take it. It’s a seminar course. The heart of the course is to read Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” It’s a book that a lot of people talk about but not many have actually read. I’m also going to bring two other books that are also in that category. David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” and “War and Peace.” Just like the students will have to do reports on “Origin of Species,” I’ll do reports on either “Infinite Jest” or “War and Peace,” whichever the class chooses. I can’t stand to not teach, that’s a big reason for teaching the biology course. But more importantly, teaching is one of the fundamental things we do with each other as human beings. We actually teach one another when we have a great conversation. But there are other ways of teaching, too, and it’s what Earlham has such a high reputation for. It’s like oxygen to me. When other things aren’t going well, and you have a good class, you can say ‘Well, at least I’m doing something for Earlham.’
What do you hope to accomplish before the end of your first year? What are your long-term goals?
Our new provost, Lori Schroeder, and I have worked hard, and I think we’ve had some success in building trust with our faculty, to let them know that we care about them and we care about the institution they represent. I’d love that trust to carry on through this year and into subsequent years. We have some difficult work to do. The environment for higher education, both in our state and nationally, is tough right now. It’s tough politically. Starting this year, there will actually be a decline in the number of college-age young people graduating high school.
These are real challenges for us. In the first six months here, Lori and I have talked really openly with the faculty about community, about the challenge of growing Earlham’s enrollment. We already have some plans in place to meet that challenge. We just rolled out the Get5 program, where admissions faculty are doing the administrative work of matching prospective students with faculty for dialogue. Whenever I’ve talked with alums, I’m always told that what they ultimately loved about Earlham was the quality of the faculty and teaching, but what made them choose Earlham was the interactions that they had with faculty during the application and decision-making process. I think Covid eroded some of that. It eroded so many things, and I think it eroded some of that. So we’re going to keep expanding those kinds of efforts. Many new academic programs have been introduced to the curriculum in recent years.
Do you see that trend continuing?
We are exploring a physician’s assistant program that has to be approved by our faculty. We are contemplating other possibilities consistent with our mission, and in service of enrollment and sustainability, but nothing is certain at the moment.
What about athletics? Is there a chance football returns?
I have had conversations with many alums about this, people are quite passionate about football. I grew up within listening distance of Notre Dame stadium, so I love college football. If football comes back, it will take a while. We’ll have to do it right, if we do it, which is to say we’ll have to set it up so that it’s financially sustainable and a reasonably competitive part of Earlham athletics with the other teams we play. So those are some things we’d need to consider — but it’s possible.
Many Earlham community members have remarked that you have frequently been spotted at community events. What is your favorite memory so far from your time as president?
I wish I could get out to more events, if I’m honest, but I try to do a different thing as often as possible. So far my favorite memory was during Homecoming, running the 5K. I didn’t do nearly as well as I expected to, but I did finish.
What is your favorite place to relax on campus?
Back Campus. You get back there, especially among the horse paddocks and fields, and it reminds me of walking in England. When I was a kid, my family spent a year in Oxford. We were out in the country, and we’d go walking. You just feel so far from everything out there.
Willa, the First Dog, is often seen with you as you hike Back Campus. How’s she doing?
We usually take her on a walk into campus once a day. She loves running into students and faculty, she’s very people-oriented. The huge field behind the 712 College Avenue house where we live, I mean Willa has never had a field that huge where she can just run and not have to worry about turning back. She was a little anxious when we first got here, but she’s settled in nicely.
If money were no issue, the sky was the limit, where would you want to see Earlham in the next 5-to-10 years?
I’d like to see Earlham at a place where money is no issue. I’d like to see us moving towards a status where students who have applied to go to Earlham College are biting their nails, hopeful to get in. ■