Humility and humor blend with ‘substance and steel’
in St. Bonaventure University’s 22nd president
By TOM MISSEL
The image may seem incongruous: a white college grad with a social work degree laughing with kids at a middle school in New Orleans while teaching conflict resolution.
In a cardigan, pleated khakis … and a turtleneck.
This isn’t a photo from a critically panned prequel to “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” that never made it to television. This is 24-year-old Jeff Gingerich, St. Bonaventure’s 22nd president, who stepped far outside his comfort zone to better understand the world beyond the Iowa pig farm he grew up on, a world far more complex than he imagined.
Gingerich didn’t go to New Orleans to add an impressive bullet point to his resume. He signed up for two years but stayed for four more to manage the conflict resolution programming of the Twomey Center for Peace through Justice at Loyola University — for room, board and a $100 monthly stipend.
He stayed, he said, because he didn’t want to be part of the “revolving door of volunteers” who often left those they came to help feeling a bit jaded. Those words compelled Gingerich to stay.
“I wanted to make more of a commitment,” he said. “I actually became the program manager for all the other volunteers my last four years, which allowed me to work more directly with the community. It was during this time that I decided I wanted to be a sociologist. This ongoing conversation with the community made me realize there are bigger systemic issues and cultures that I wanted to understand.
“I learned so much more from the students and community members than I ever taught them. The experience of living in a diverse, urban community allowed me to reflect and challenge my place in the world. Those six years informed so much of what I did at Cabrini and Scranton, and what I want to continue to do at St. Bonaventure.”
The seeds of Gingerich’s curiosity about social injustice were sown years before when his high school basketball coach took a small group of students to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1985, for a weeklong immersion to hear from civil rights leaders less than 20 years removed from the tumult of the 1960s.
In advance of the trip, the students were asked to read “Let Justice Roll Down” by Dr. John Perkins, a civil rights activist and founder of Voice of Calvary Ministries, which hosted the student group.
“We were able to hear directly from some of the people that we read about and you could see Jeff just got it. He was so engaged, as all the kids were, in really wrestling with these issues of racism and social justice,” said Dwight Gingerich (no relation), still the boys basketball coach and now the principal at Hillcrest Academy (formerly Iowa Mennonite School) in Kalona, Iowa.
The experience in Mississippi broadened Gingerich’s worldview and set the course for an academic career rooted in service.
He studied abroad during his sophomore year at Hesston Community College in Kansas, working with peanut farmers and a school for the deaf in Jamaica, and he interned at a mediation center his senior year at Eastern Mennonite while working on his bachelor’s degree in social work.
“I didn’t know yet if I wanted to be a social worker, but I knew I wanted to help people,” Gingerich said.
The foundation for that desire was rooted in the tiny farming community of Holbrook, Iowa, which lost its post office in 1953 and the Catholic church at the heart of town in 1996.
“My dad was working for other farmers but wanted to start his own farm so he bought this abandoned farmhouse the year I was born (1968),” said Gingerich, the middle child of three. “The farm he grew up on we could see across the field.”
At the time, 6 miles removed from the relative civilization of Parnell, Iowa — pop. 234 in 1980 — Gingerich wondered what having more kids to play with would be like. Now?
Gingerich raised champion pigs as a boy in Iowa.
“I realize it was an ideal childhood in so many ways. My (older) sister and I were closest in age and we had so much fun playing down by the creek,” Gingerich said. “And the amount of time I got to spend with my dad was amazing. There was a lot of work to do on the farm, but when there wasn’t, my little brother and I would always be playing catch or shooting hoops with him, depending on the season: baseball, football or basketball.”
What Gingerich inherited from his dad, Warren, who was educated in a one-room schoolhouse in Holbrook, was a leadership style grounded in quiet confidence and collaboration.
“My father is a remarkable guy, the guy who people looked to in the church community for leadership, but he did it in a very quiet way,” Gingerich said.
Gingerich also learned the value of hard work growing up on a farm, raising pigs that he still brags about 43 years later.
“You are looking at the grand champion swine winner of the 1979 Iowa County Fair. We cleaned up that year,” Gingerich said with a big smile. “That’s how I would make my money, raising and selling pigs — that and bailing a lot of hay for my grandfather and neighbors.”
That work ethic carried over to the basketball court.
“Jeff was a good shooter, very fundamentally sound and worked so hard to develop his skills,” said Coach Gingerich, who is sixth all-time in victories for Iowa boys basketball. “And he was very unselfish. He was great with his teammates and loved by his classmates. Even then, he had that twinkle in his eye that wins people over so easily.”
Gingerich (12) led the league in assists as a senior at Eastern Mennonite College.
Gingerich’s time abroad in Jamaica derailed his playing career at Hesston CC, but he decided to get back in shape and give it another shot at Eastern Mennonite College.
“Leadership wise, that experience was pivotal for me,” said Gingerich, who led the Old Dominion Athletic Conference in assists his senior year. “I was still a pretty shy kid and not very confident, but playing basketball at Eastern Mennonite forced me to take on a leadership role. Otherwise, as a transfer student, I could have probably just kept to myself if I hadn’t played.”
After completing his doctoral dissertation in sociology from Penn while teaching at Bluffton University, Gingerich spent 14 years at Cabrini University in suburban Philadelphia (2005-2018), teaching in the Department of Sociology and Criminology his first four years.
Just a couple weeks into his tenure at Cabrini, Gingerich traveled with a group of faculty colleagues to visit the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, founded by Mother Cabrini in 1880. Dr. Mary Van Brunt, an economics professor at the time and eventually the dean of the business school, helped to organize the trip.
“Jeff was kind of quiet at first but then we started talking about how impressed we were with the mission and the service of the sisters, and he just starts talking about the mission, and how we can take this to what we were doing at Cabrini,” said
Van Brunt, who in October was named president of Spring Hill College in Alabama.
“I just looked at him and thought, ‘Wow, this guy is brand new, and he already gets it. He already understands the charism of the sisters and the mission of the college.’ I didn’t even realize at the time he wasn’t Catholic.”
A few months later, the two were on a small team that went to a workshop at Catholic University to create the Justice Matters curriculum that became the cornerstone of the mission for the college.
“Jeff transitioned into Cabrini so seamlessly that it was hard to believe it was his first semester,” Van Brunt said. “I realized pretty quickly that he really knows this stuff — I mean, really knows it and believes it and lives it. His commitment to social justice is genuine and obvious in all that he does. We used to joke that he was a better Catholic than we were.”
Gingerich has enjoyed meeting as many members of the campus community as he can, which even meant helping first-year students lug dorm essentials to their rooms on move-in day.
After nine years in the classroom at Bluffton and Cabrini, Gingerich ventured to the “dark side,” as Van Brunt called it, taking over as dean for Academic Affairs in 2009 before being named provost and vice president for Academic Affairs in 2014.
“His students really loved and respected him, and were very disappointed when he became an administrator, but that’s when his contributions really flourished,” said Van Brunt, who introduced Gingerich at his SBU Inauguration Oct. 1. “As president (at Bonaventure), I think he can reach even more students and have a greater impact on them.”
Gingerich said he “loved being in the classroom” and asking his students the “hard questions his college professors asked of him.” He stepped in as interim dean in 2008 because, “I thought I might be able to look at higher ed from a bigger picture,” he said. “I discovered that I liked administration, that I liked meetings — I know, what’s wrong with me, right? — and that I liked fundraising.
“What I really liked was that I could get outside of just sociology and criminology and talk with faculty and students in all of the other disciplines.”
Aspiring to the top rung on the higher ed ladder was not on his to-do list. He left Cabrini in 2018 to be the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at the University of Scranton.
“Being a chief academic officer was kind of the ideal for me,” Gingerich said. “Because of all the pressure involved — the crisis management, the fundraising, managing a budget — I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be a president.”
Gingerich addresses alumni and donors at Highmark Stadium the day after the public launch of the Bolder Bonaventure campaign. He has spent a busy fall on the road meeting alumni and friends of the university.
Gerry Zaboski, one of his closest colleagues during his four years at Scranton, knew better; knew that his good friend was presidential material. Now the senior vice president for the Office of the President, Zaboski was vice provost when he worked closely with Gingerich to launch a strategic enrollment plan at Scranton.
“Jeff was able to move the levers in a meaningful way, enabling us to move quickly when previously we would have moved slowly,” Zaboski said. “The ability to move where the market is going in a snappy way is essential, and Jeff was able to accomplish that without consternation. He has this easy way of helping folks to see the wisdom of something, and to move toward that goal without being pushed or dragged. He really leads in a way that others want to follow.”
Gingerich helped develop programs in mechanical engineering, speech language pathology, and communication sciences and disorders at Scranton, but he also paid attention to the mundane.
“We made wonderful progress on stuff like policy, things that people don’t pay attention to but make a real difference,” Zaboski said. “Jeff had a knack of knowing where the energy needed to go and was able to get people on board in a way that was welcoming and empowering.”
Blending a sense of purpose with a self-deprecating sense of humor has served Gingerich well, Zaboski said.
“Jeff has a wonderful sense of humor that can’t be understated and that allows people to have an instant rapport with him. That sort of authenticity was really valued at Scranton and I’m sure it will be at Bonaventure, too,” Zaboski said.
“But he matches that humor with substance and steel. He has the grit to put his shoulder to something to get it done. He’s not one to tell you what to do, but someone who will work with you to get things done.”
Eventually, buoyed by the encouragement of colleagues at Cabrini and Scranton, Gingerich decided he was ready to pursue a presidency.
Gingerich receives blessings and well wishes from the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany
After his first Zoom interview with St. Bonaventure’s Presidential Search Committee, Gingerich admitted, “It just felt right. Each step of the way, that’s the way it felt. I’m not one to use the word ‘calling’ very often, but this felt like the right place for me.
“I always felt like the Franciscan charism would be a draw and the search committee was very clear: We want someone who will fulfill our Franciscan mission. That’s all that mattered to them and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do that.”
Van Brunt, his longtime Cabrini colleague, has witnessed more than once Gingerich’s compassion and integrity, values that are at the core of St. Bonaventure’s Franciscan mission.
“I’ve been with him when he’s reached out to people experiencing homelessness to interact in a way that many people are nervous to,” she said. “He’s such a humble role model in that regard so I think the Franciscans are a perfect order for him.”
Though Jeff Gingerich graduated more than 35 years ago, Dwight Gingerich has followed Jeff’s career closely and thinks so highly of him that he invited him back to speak at Hillcrest’s graduation in the spring.
“I’m so proud of him,” Dwight said. “Jeff has the disposition and personality to engage so many different kinds of people. He’s unflappable and not easily given to anger. Jeff is such a positive person so what he’s achieved doesn’t surprise me at all.”
(Tom Missel is chief communications officer at St. Bonaventure.)