A former Monmouth College chemistry professor will return to campus to serve as the school’s president later this year.
Dr. Patricia Draves will be Monmouth College's 15th president — and the second woman to serve in the role, after Sue Huseman in the mid-1990s.
Current president Clarence Wyatt is retiring at the end of this school year, after leading the college for a decade.
Draves is a scientist who began researching chemotherapy drugs at the University of Texas after earning a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from the University of Illinois.
She’s also an experienced liberal arts educator and administrator, who was unanimously chosen for the position by the Monmouth College Board of Trustees after a national search.
“I’ve always been a huge advocate for liberal arts education and decided that was where I was going to spend my life serving students,” Draves told TSPR.
She will begin her presidency in July.
Mark Kopinski, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in a release the board looks forward to Draves' leadership.
“Her groundbreaking work as a college president and academic leader, along with her track record of developing innovative student-centered programs, has distinguished her in higher education. The entire Monmouth community is excited that she is again embracing the College’s tartan as our new leader," Kopinski said.
Enhancing curricular experiences
After her post-doc work in Texas, Draves taught in Arkansas and Illinois before serving 11 years as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio.
In that role, she led the establishment of 14 new academic programs and the institution’s first graduate programs.
Since 2017, Draves has served as president of Graceland University, a small, residential liberal arts college in the even smaller town of Lamoni, Iowa.
But it also has a professional development subsidiary that serves millions and graduate programs.
“When I arrived at Graceland, there was a strong need to address the student experience on the traditional residential campus in a small town of 1,500 people,” she said. “So the campus is students’ lives.”
Over the last seven years, she’s worked to enhance the student experience through things like improvements to the student union and athletic center.
Then she turned to transforming the curricular experience.
“We did a deep dive, trying to address the challenges of higher education,” she said. “Because we can’t be all things to all people.”
She says she worked with faculty to determine what Graceland should focus on, based on the core strengths of a liberal arts education.
“Like writing, communication, and creative thinking. All skills that are needed to advance our society,” she said.
They implemented a mandatory second major for all students in transformational leadership.
“That brings those skills and develops them over the four years. So students get a major, a traditional major, and then all students get a second major,” she said.
‘A coming home’
Draves’ connections to Monmouth College run deep.
“It’s just a place that feels like home to us, and Monmouth and western Illinois,” Draves said.
A Rhode Island native, Draves was first introduced to Monmouth College in 1986 when she started dating her husband, Jeff. He’s a Monmouth alum from the class of 1985.
“We’ve been back for lots of homecomings since then,” Draves said. “When we had the opportunity to become faculty members there, we jumped at the chance.”
Both of them taught chemistry at Monmouth from 2002 to 2006. She’s a biochemist and he’s a physical chemist.
“I just fell in love with serving students at Monmouth, and helping them reach their potential and find ways to help them to go out and transform the world,” she said.
As a faculty member at Monmouth 20 years ago, Draves helped form the college’s biochemistry program. She nabbed a $35,000 grant for a DNA sequencer and other grants to outfit her research lab on campus.
She also worked on a grant proposal that netted $800,000 from the Mellon Foundation for faculty career enhancement at Associated Colleges of the Midwest institutions.
Draves and her husband raised their children in Monmouth during those years … and were active in the community with the school district, the YMCA, and the Buchanan Center for the Arts.
“Quite honestly, Monmouth is the only place I would leave Graceland for,” Draves said. “It’s very much a coming home.”
Draves said it’s also an opportunity to utilize what she’s learned over the last seven years as the president at a rural Midwest college to address the big challenges in higher education.
“Monmouth is not immune to those,” Draves said. “I’m happy that I’ve learned some things here at Graceland that will then go on to serve Monmouth and Monmouth students.”
Innovative solutions
Declining enrollment is not just a regional problem. There are fewer college-age students across the country – and fewer of them are attending four-year institutions.
Draves said there also are misconceptions about the value of a four-year degree.
“The data is increasingly clear on the economic impacts [of a college degree],” Draves said. “As well as, college graduates help lead their communities.”
As a scientist turned administrator, Draves draws on her research background and uses data to make predictive models that help solve problems in higher education.
Her vision is to honor Monmouth’s history and its enduring core values, but through the evolving lens of the needs of today’s students – and society’s needs.
“The constant innovation to address what students are interested in but also what the market needs and what the workforce needs,” Draves said. “So things we’re hearing from employers. We need people to be able to work together. We need people who are innovators and creators.”
That’s another thing Graves is proud of from her time leading Graceland University that she’ll bring to Monmouth — helping faculty and staff be innovative in addressing today’s higher education and workforce needs.
She said that could include enhancing existing academic programs that align with that, such as the college’s business and teacher education programs.
“So looking at ways to grow those. But then also bringing some potential programs whether that’s academic programs, athletic programs, or co-curricular programs that students might be interested in,” she said.
Tri States Public Radio produced this story. TSPR relies on financial support from our readers and listeners in order to provide coverage of the issues that matter to west central Illinois, southeast Iowa, and northeast Missouri. As someone who values the content created by TSPR's news department please consider making a financial contribution.
