The Leadership Line, Whole

1966 – present

The presidents: For its first fifty-six years Holy Cross College was led only by religious of the congregation that founded it — brothers for most of that span, then a priest of the congregation — and since 2022 it has been led by a layman formed in the congregation's schools. The line is short enough to print whole, and the record gives every holder's name. Where the sources disagree about how the holders should be counted, this article prints the names and dates and leaves the counting dispute to the note, unresolved.

Brother John Driscoll, president and dean, 1966–1987. The founder-president served its first two decades — the college's history page says two decades, the dates make twenty-one academic years — knowing, by the college's account, every student by name, background, and record, and holding the school to small classes and available faculty as its permanent philosophy. He died on 23 June 1987, at the close of his presidency. Brother James Leik, acting president, 1987–1988. The co-founder took the school across the transition as he took every other necessary job, reluctantly and briefly, the presidents page says, until a replacement could be found; his mark on the college is not this year but the forty years around it, ending in the archivist's chair. Brother David Naples, president, 1988–1990. His two years are the thinnest documented of any holder's in the open record read — no account of particular works in his term was found, a gap whose settler, the college's archives, is named in the note. Brother Raphael Wilson, acting president, 1990–1992. A biologist who had taught at Notre Dame from 1959 and served as president of the University of Portland from 1979 to 1981, he held Holy Cross through its second transition.

Brother Richard Gilman, president, 1992–2010. The second long presidency, and the transforming one: under Gilman the junior college became the residential baccalaureate college, as the course article of this build records — the Vincent Academic Center, the Millennium Arch and Hardesty Plaza, remodeled and new residence halls, campus ministry, the international experience program, and the Pfeil Center all stand to his term, and a tribute entered in the Congressional Record in September 2010 credited him with exactly that transformation on his retirement. He announced his retirement in January 2010 after, as the announcement counted it, seventeen years, and his successor was named that same month. Gilman went back to teaching, and died on 24 September 2017, at Dujarie House in Holy Cross Village, on the ground of the college he had rebuilt.

Brother John Paige, president, January 2011–April 2017. Named in January 2010 while he was serving in Rome as vicar and first general assistant of the whole congregation, he took office on 1 January 2011 and was installed as president on 23 September 2011. An educator of long standing in the congregation's high schools and at Saint Edward's University, he chose to live on campus in Pulte Hall in community with students and brothers, presided over the Gateway Program's founding in 2013 and the fiftieth anniversary in 2016, and was still president when the financial crisis broke. In early April 2017 the board replaced him, suddenly by the education press's account, with the man who would rescue the college. Father David Tyson, interim president from 7 April 2017, president from 31 July 2017 to 2022. A priest of the congregation — the only priest to hold the office — he came with the heaviest résumé the college has had in the post: Notre Dame vice president for student affairs, thirteen years as president of the University of Portland, nine years as provincial superior of the congregation's United States province. Appointed interim on 7 April 2017 and elected to a five-year term by unanimous vote that July, he executed the land sale, reorganization, and stabilization recorded in the course article, reinstated the two-year transfer program, added a three-year degree path, and retired at his term's end in 2022.

Dr. Marco J. Clark, president from 1 July 2022, holds the office in November 2026. Clark is the first president of the college who is neither a brother nor a priest of Holy Cross — a lay educator whose thirty-five years before 2022 were spent in the congregation's schools, as a counselor, teacher, coach, and principal in Maryland and Washington, and then as executive director of the Holy Cross Institute at Saint Edward's University in Austin. Announced on 13 April 2022 and in office from 1 July, he was formally installed on 25 March 2023, at a ceremony in the Pfeil Center, with a day of service and an academic symposium around it. His term's works to date are the present-day article's matter: record enrollment growth, the new Holy Cross Hall, the athletic complex expansion, the downtown center, and the strategic plan the college calls With Eyes of Faith. On 13 February 2026 the board of trustees and the members of the Midwest Province extended his contract through 2030 — the college entering its sixtieth-anniversary year with its leadership settled, on its own announcement, for the rest of the decade.

Sources:

1. Holy Cross College presidents page — the seven pre-2022 holders, the Driscoll–Leik partnership, Gilman's works and 2017 death, Wilson's career, Tyson's July 2017 appointment after April interim service.
2. Holy Cross College history and mission page — Driscoll 1966–1987, Gilman 1992–2010, the two interim presidents noted as a pair.
3. Congressional Record, 22 September 2010 — the Gilman retirement tribute: Millennium Arch, Hardesty Plaza, two residence halls, the Pfeil Center.
4. Today's Catholic, January 2010, and the Brothers' February 2013 midweek sheet — Paige named January 2010, in office 1 January 2011, installed 23 September 2011, resident in Pulte Hall.
5. Inside Higher Education, May 2017; Congregation of Holy Cross and the Brothers' April 2022 midweek sheet — Paige's April 2017 replacement; Clark named 13 April 2022, effective 1 July 2022, first president who is not a brother or priest.
6. Today's Catholic, March 2023 — Clark's installation, 25 March 2023, in the Pfeil Center; Holy Cross College announcement, 13 February 2026 — Clark's contract extended through 2030.