When Bruce Johnston got a call from a small college in Batesville, Arkansas, inquiring if he would be interested in a job there, he was not really sure where Batesville was. Still, he knew he wanted to be a dean of students in a place where he could make a difference.
Now, after 25 years as vice president for student life and dean of students, Johnston is preparing to retire. He has seen a lot of changes at Lyon College, which was called Arkansas College when he arrived, and over the years he has gotten to know students who have gone on to be leaders in their communities, professionals at the top of their careers and even board members at the college.
Johnston spent his early years in Ohio, then moved to West Virginia just before his eighth-grade year. When he was in high school, he was heavily involved with sports at his school, and he loosely planned on being a teacher and coach when he grew up.
“Football ran into basketball, which ran into track, and those were my primary interests,” he said. “If someone had asked me in college what my career objective was, I would have said teacher and coach. I went to a liberal arts college to see what I wanted to do with it.”
Johnston went to Westminster College in Pennsylvania, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, for his undergraduate degree and majored in history. His initial plans of being a teacher were dashed, though, when he was completing his student teaching at a local school.
“When I started doing student teaching, I went to a school that I don’t think had ever had a student teacher,” he said. “That was not a terribly good experience. At one point, the dean of students [at Westminster College] said to me, ‘Next year we’re going to have an internship in this office. Would you be interested in that?’ And at that point I was interested in anything.”
That internship offer was presented to Johnston in his senior year, so he graduated with his bachelor’s degree and stayed for an extra year as the intern in the dean’s office. While he was doing that internship, he worked on a master’s degree in college student personnel at Bowling Green State University.
“At that time, Bowling Green had in their student personnel program what they called externships,” he said. “I did mine back at Westminster in Pennsylvania, so I drove out to Bowling Green once a week for class and then six weeks every summer for two summers, and then I was done.”
With a master’s degree in hand and that internship/externship at Westminster under his belt, Johnston was ready to jump into a job in college administration. He started in West Liberty, West Virginia, where he worked as assistant dean of men and director of student housing at West Liberty University. After four years, he accepted a position as assistant dean for student development at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
“It was back to a church-related college,” he said. “Hope was Reformed Church of America. … It was definitely attractive to be at a church-related school. I spent those four years at a state college [in West Liberty], but I was really more attracted to small liberal arts colleges, so that’s why I wound up at Hope and then Lyon.”
Johnston was at Hope College for 13 years. In that time, he was responsible for residence life at the school. There were between 2,500 and 3,000 students at Hope in the 13 years Johnston was there, and he said he enjoyed managing the 12 residence halls, three apartment buildings and several Victorian houses that housed up to 15 students each.
“Residence life is where the action is on a college campus,” he said. “That makes for a fun life.”
While he was happy at Hope College, Johnston still had an itch to be a dean of students. That is when he got a call from Arkansas College.
“By then I had completed a doctorate at Western Michigan University, so I was looking for jobs,” he said, “but I wanted to find the right place. I didn’t want to just move for the sake of moving. I wanted to find a place where my family and I could feel comfortable and stay for a period of time. I didn’t realize it would be 25 years, and it’s worked out very well.”
The president at Arkansas College at the time was John Griffin, and Griffin had been a student under the same dean of students who gave Johnston an internship at Westminster College. Through that triangle, Johnston’s name and reputation had been relayed to Griffin, and the president thought Johnston would be a good fit for Arkansas College.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Johnston said of his first visit to Batesville. “It was the rolling hills I had heard about, and there was so much access to outdoors things to do. It was a small town, but it was not a tiny town. That felt very good. The town where I went to college at Westminster was a very tiny town; it made Batesville look massive.”
In Batesville, it was not just the town and the topography that grabbed Johnston’s attention. Griffin had big plans for the school, and Johnston wanted to be in on it.
“The 1990s were really a time for this college of incredible change. It was becoming this residential liberal arts college, and that was one of the things that attracted me here, and that has been exciting the whole time,” he said. “That first year when I got here, John Griffin said we were going to develop an honor system. I didn’t know how I felt about that, but it has turned into something that has been far, far better in the development of student leadership and trust among people than I ever expected it to be.”
As the dean of students, Johnston has been able to get to know many students, and he said Lyon is the perfect size for him to be able to address questions and issues within the context of relationships.
“You can call people by name,” he said. “That is the main difference between this and a much larger institution, where it’s a sea of faces. That’s one thing I remember from my first few years here: As people walked across the stage at graduation I recognized almost every one of them. When I was at Hope, even though it was only 3,000 students, you’d look out at graduation into this sea of faces and think, ‘Who are all of these people?’”
Johnston is set to retire at the end of this academic year, and Patrick Mulick, associate professor of psychology, will take Johnston’s place effective July 1.
In retirement, Johnston said, he looks forward to spending time with his grandchildren and traveling with his wife. He does not live far from Lyon, however, and will remain a faithful Lyon fan, even as he steps out of his faculty role.
“It’s been a great time being here,” he said, “and it will continue to be.”
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.