Rebecca L. Sherrick (G80)
President, Aurora University

When she became president of Aurora University seven years ago, Rebecca L. Sherrick needed to update and upgrade not one but two campuses — the main campus in the west Chicago suburb of Aurora, Ill., and a former YMCA camp in Williams Bay, Wis., "a beautiful setting" on Geneva Lake that served for more than a century as a camp and conference center (formerly used for preseason practice for many years by the Northwestern University Marching Band).

This involved "very different turnarounds in very different places at the same time," Sherrick says. "Neither campus had a strong fundraising history, but since 2000 we've raised almost $50 million, doubled our undergraduate enrollment and launched a summer music festival on Geneva Lake. Both campuses have a strong tradition of preparing graduates in helping professions."

Sherrick joined the faculty of Carroll College, in Waukesha, Wis., in 1980 upon receiving her doctorate in U.S. and Latin American history from Northwestern on a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship. Her research centered on Jane Addams and others in the "first generation of American women to go into public life," she says. "The questions I was interested in were, 'What made them contemplate careers rather than families? And, how did they find the sustenance to pursue their alternative choice?'"

During her years at Carroll she developed a women's studies program and served two terms as faculty president before eventually rising to provost. As someone who grew up in a small college town, Sherrick says the notion of leading an institution of higher education was always on her mind.

"I knew that's what I wanted to do," she says. "It looked like the most fun job."