GODDARD NAMES ACTING
PLAINFIELD -- Outgoing Goddard College President Jack Lindquist has been granted a sabbatical that will begin in April, nine months before his contract officially expires.
Lois Weinstein Sontag, chairwoman of the board of trustees, announced this week that Lindquist would leave on a paid sabbatical April 13. Beth Warrell, a college trustee and National Life employee, will step in as acting president until a new one is hired.
"I think it's a positive move for Jack, and I think it's a positive move for Beth," Sontag said.
Lindquist, 47, who helped to bolster dwindling enrollment and to pull Goddard out of a multimillion dollar debt that threatened to close the school in the 1970s, said the board's unanimous approval of his leave came as a surprise.
"I asked for one (a sabbatical) two years ago, and they said they couldn't spare me. So, I guess this is the postponed version of it. I didn't ask for it again the board chair talked me into it," Lindquist said.
Warrell, 42, said she was asked to fill the interim position because of her experience with the school as a twotime graduate and six-year trustee.
Sontag said Lindquist's departure had nothing to do with the recent financial problems the college has been experiencing.
"He has been wanting to finish a book he started, and he has been trying to do it while he is working, so we granted the request," she said.
Warrell agreed, saying, "Jack saved the school. He basically has worked seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
He's given up his vacation year after year, and the trustees felt for a long time that he deserved a sabbatical. It's
not a move to get Jack out early. It's more a notion that we would like honor him for the things that he has done."
A presidential search committee last week narrowed the search to five candidates.
PRESIDENT; OUTGOING OFFICIAL
TO TAKE SABBATICAL
'I asked for one (a sabbatical) two years ago, and they said they couldn't spare me. So, I guess this is the postponed version of it. I didn't ask for it again the board chair talked me into it.'
Jack Lindquist
president
