Woodward Academy names new president

Nearly 10 months after Woodward Academy’s president death, the private College Park school took a big step toward moving on Saturday when it announced the hiring of a new president.

The school named LaGrange College President Stuart Gulley to succeed Harry C. “Hank” Payne, 60, who police said committed suicide Jan. 7 by jumping from the eighth floor of a Midtown hotel.

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Courtesy of Woodward Academy

Stuart Gulley

STUART GULLEY
Age: 47

Hometown: Nashville

Family: Wife Kathleen; sons Andrew, 12, and Matthew, 10

Education: B.A. in Modern European History, Vanderbilt University (1983); master of divinity, Emory University's Candler School of Theology (1986); Ph.D. in higher education, Georgia State University (1999).

On the side: Gulley is an ordained minister with the United Methodist Church and an occasional writer for The LaGrange Daily News.

Woodward Academy: woodward.edu

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“Clearly, Woodward has been in a time of mourning and grief for some time,” Gulley, 47, said in a telephone interview Saturday afternoon, several hours after getting the news of his appointment. “They have, in a healthy way, dealt with his passing, and they are now ready for another leader to come in and lead them into a new day.”

A Vanderbilt University graduate with a master’s of divinity degree from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, Gulley will remain at LaGrange, a four-year liberal arts school in its namesake Georgia city about 65 miles southwest of Atlanta, through the end of the current school year.

He will assume some duties at Woodward early next year and move there full time by early summer. LaGrange hopes to have a new president named by July, Gulley said.

Gulley will leave LaGrange after a 13-year tenure that saw a $65 million capital improvement campaign and a 20-percent increase in faculty members.

“Leaving here is going to be extremely difficult,” Gulley said. But, he added, “it is time for a change for the college and for me.”

With 2,930 students in kindergarten through 12th grade at two campuses, Woodward Academy in College Park is regarded as one of the best college prep schools in the country.

Still, Gulley, whose 22 years of experience were all in higher education, had reservations about leaving a college setting.

“It was a part of my discernment process, sure,” he acknowledged. “Would the grade school setting be an appropriate move for me?”

Gulley said he sought the advice of two college presidents-turned-private-school chiefs. “I learned from them that they found it more invigorating because they had a longer time to touch the lives of the students and make a difference,” he said.

Woodward officials mourned Payne’s unexpected loss through last winter. The search for a new president got into full swing in late spring.

The search committee sought out Gulley this summer because “he’s had an incredibly rich experience but is still at a relatively young age,” Ben F. Johnson III, chairman of the school’s governing board, said in a telephone interview.

And bringing in an ordained minister – Gulley is ordained in the United Methodist Church – to help an institution in healing only made sense, Johnson said.

“He has a certain counselor quality to his leadership. He listens, and he’s empathetic,” Johnson said. “I think that will be an important element of his leadership, especially at a time when you had a very strong leader whose leadership ends in a tragic death.”

In a letter e-mailed Saturday to the LaGrange community, Gulley said his new job is “an opportunity to enhance Woodward’s service to Atlanta and beyond, strengthening its status as a national leader in independent education.”

Still, moving on will be hard.

“In leaving, I am keenly mindful there is not a college president anywhere, who after 12 years, still enjoys and is blessed by the respect and confidence of so many stakeholders,” Gulley wrote. “My love for LaGrange is, and shall always remain, deep and strong.”