On July 1, Kent Chabotar will become the eighth president of Guilford College. And as a Roman Catholic, Chabotar is to become the first non-Quaker ever to serve as Guilford’s president, an issue of contention for some students and faculty.Chabotar, 55, succeeds Don McNemar, who announced last semester that this, his sixth year on the job, would be his last.

In accepting the post, Chabotar leaves behind Bowdoin College, a liberal arts institution in Maine, where for the past 11 years he has served as treasurer and vice president for finance and administration.

The Board of Trustees, which had narrowed down the pool of applicants to two finalists, offered Chabotar the position after his on-campus interviews two weeks ago. The announcement was especially long in coming due to the untimely death of Chabotar’s father. Chabotar was considering other job offers as well.

“My father’s death really focused me on what I want to do with the next period of my life,” he said. “When that happens, it really clarifies your thinking as to what’s important. And I was inclined to go to Guilford anyway, but the whole scene at home really drove the point home for me that this is what I was meant to do.”

Chabotar, who has also taught at Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts, and Michigan State University, and regularly taught at Bowdoin, has what Bruce Stewart, chairman of the Board of Trustees, called, “a national reputation as a financial manager and as an academic administrator.”

But Chabotar’s rsum is not important for those students and faculty who feel that an effort to preserve and strengthen Guilford’s Quaker traditions weighs more heavily than anything else.

Chabotar considered it a precedented decision, though, noting that two-third of the nation’s Quaker colleges are headed by non-Quakers.

Max Carter, head of campus ministries, explained that although there are plans to help Chabotar learn more about Quaker ideology – and Chabotar said it’s one of his priorities – the problem is larger-scale, and has to do with the direction the college takes in the future.

“The worry with having a non-Quaker president is not the first non-Quaker,” Carter said. “It’s the second and third and fourth. The first non-Quaker may well pedal very hard to convince everyone that you can be a non-Quaker president and support the Quaker values, and may bend over backwards to assure folks that a Catholic as president of a Quaker school is not the fox in the henhouse.

“But once that has been established, it’s easier for the next president not to be a Quaker. And bit by bit you wonder if subtly, and in ways almost not recognized, the college takes on a trajectory towards being just another fine secular liberal arts college.”

Benji Hebner, a junior and Quaker, agreed and said that Quakerism still has a marked effect on the college.

“People do still come to Guilford and see something different,” he said. “I think the people who are in charge of this school don’t see how fragile that is. This is just the first tap in a long series of dominoes.”

But students like Bryan Warf, a sophomore and Quaker, see no problem, so long as the president doesn’t stray from the principles upon which the school was established.

“The Board of Trustees picked who they felt would do the best job,” Warf said. “I’ve met many people who have never heard of Quakers or knew what we are about, but they still fit right into our way of doing things.”

Chabotar said, “[Guilford’s] got great values in terms of candor, complicity, and tolerance that I would embrace as a Quaker or a Catholic.” He went on to say that while he can talk all day about how great those principles are, the most important thing is for him to actually practice them.

Chabotar said one thing he looks forward to most at Guilford is the community’s “ability to confront each other openly by saying ‘I think we made a mistake.’ Students can expect lots of showing up at events to get to know people. They can expect me to be accessible. They can expect me to be brutally candid and honest, and I expect the same from everyone, from students and faculty.”

Chabotar outlined his goals for at least the first six months of his presidency. He said he wants to first identify the key issues and determine the best processes for managing them, whether that involves fixing something or taking advantage of an opportunity.

“Until you know what the answers are, it’s hard to raise money, because people give to something specific, they give for a vision, they give for a defined product,” he said. “And I think Guilford’s got lots of those attributes and I just want to revisit them to make sure it’s the best possible definition before I start trying to raise money or start a budget process.”

Beyond that, he said his focus will be three things: finances, strategic planning, and governance.

“Some people believe that Guilford’s curriculum is fairly narrow,” he said. “I don’t think that’s true, I think it’s very broad. In fact, one of the issues is how broad it should be. We can still be a broad curriculum while still emphasizing certain things we think are particular points of light.”

He also said that Guilford can expect him for seven to 10 years as a rough estimate. “At Bowdoin, I thought I’d last five years and I lasted 11,” he said. “And frankly, I’m coming to a lot better weather, so that alone is going to be a big attraction for me.”

Chabotar will be moving to Greensboro in mid-August but will be making campus visits April 18 and 19, and sometime in May and June.

He sounds excited about the transition and is looking optimistically to the future. He said, “The Trustees are setting high expectations for me and for the college, and I think high expectations bring out the best in us.