LANGLEY, BC—If first impressions are anything to go by, then Trinity Western University’s (TWU) new president-designate appears to have quickly won the hearts and minds of most of the campus community.
Jonathan Raymond is the unanimous choice of the university’s board of governors to become TWU’s next president. Currently the president of William and Catherine Booth College in Winnipeg, Raymond starts his new job July 1.
Matt Jenkins, editor of the Mars’ Hill student newspaper, says when Raymond and his wife, Irene, were introduced in chapel, they received a thunderous ovation.
“He just walked up and people were on their feet instantly, cheering and clapping and didn’t sit down—just this overwhelming show of support,” he says. “I interpreted it as relief, that we now have a discernible leader for the future.”
“The sun was breaking through the clouds that day. This is the moment the whole campus community has been waiting for,” adds student association president James Moes.
A social psychologist who did his doctoral dissertation in Peru, Raymond has worked as a professor and an administrator at both secular universities and Christian colleges across the U.S., including 11 years at the University of Hawaii. He has been at Booth College since 1999.
“We’ve ploughed up some good ground and made some progress, and there are tons of more things to do [at Booth],” says Raymond. “But I would say for my wife and I, we’re ready to move and excited about it, and really feel God’s leading in it.”
Irene Raymond is currently a professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Manitoba.
“The international contacts and experience that [Raymond] has had will be very helpful as the university continues to grow and to reach out internationally,” says TWU board member Bob Gordon, who also sees in Raymond a genuine “servant leader heart.”
“I certainly hope I can continue to grow in that…and turn the proverbial pyramid upside down,” says Raymond. “The president of the university should be the servant of everyone in the university and model that for students and for faculty, if possible.”
TWU political science professor John Dyck says Raymond’s views on servant leadership are “awesome, because…it has been very hard at times to actually say that is what we have here throughout [the university].”
Dyck says when Raymond met with more than 100 professors, it was like “peer talking to peer….He wasn’t afraid to answer the questions. Those issues he didn’t have enough knowledge of, he indicated so.”
Jenkins says he had a similar reaction following a separate meeting between Raymond and student leaders.
“‘Everybody should have a chance to get their fingerprints on the clay of the institution,’ he recalls Raymond telling them. “I’m not sure what that looks like in policy, but [it seemed to be] very much an open style of consultative leadership that he was promoting.”
Modern miracle
For his part, Raymond calls TWU a “modern-day miracle.”
“It’s 44 years old, and in so many ways, its mature systems and programs look like an institution that’s been around at least 100 years,” he says. “And yet it has a vitality, energy and respect not only in Christian circles across Canada, but [also] in the public sector in higher education.”
Most of that success he credits to outgoing president Neil Snider, whom he says has been “a tremendous president” for the past 32 years. “He hopefully will continue to be a source of advice, and certainly what he’s done will be a source of inspiration.”
Raymond freely admits he has some big shoes to fill. “Any time someone steps into a position like this,” he says, “the shoes are often bigger than their feet—and their prayer is that their feet will grow.”
