The Best Man for the Job May Be a Woman

Earlier this month, Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Wayne announced that Stacey R. Sauchuk will be its next president.

Sauchuk will be the school’s first female and second non-military president in its 85-year history.

She has spent most of the past 15 years working in higher education, including as President and CEO of the Art Institute of Philadelphia. For seven years, she served as the Chair of the Board of Trustees for her alma mater, Eastern University.

The Gladwyne resident’s hiring was by unanimous vote by the school’s Board of Trustees.

Leadership has not been stable at the school in the recent past. Charles “Tony” McGeorge, the first non-military president, had a tumultuous tenure and faced vocal opposition from some Valley Forge alums and families on the Internet. Last August, two years after earning the job of President and one year before he was supposed to leave, Col. David R. Gray resigned from the post.

“They’re hungry for strong leadership,” Sauchuk told Radnor Patch in an interview. She officially takes the helm on June 1, although she is often on the campus.

'A Diamond in the Rough'

She said she wants to take Valley Forge “to the next level” by increasing enrollment of female students in the two-year college (there are 19 currently), overall enrollment and the school’s endowment.

At its height, enrollment in the boys-only academy and now-coed college was 1,200; it is currently 500. Sauchuk wants to hit its height—she even wants there to be a waiting list, she said.

She also said that she will put new processes and programs in place that will turn what she calls “a diamond in the rough” into “what it could and should be.”

Making it what it could be will also require changing the public perception of the institution. It’s an educational institution with a military piece to it. “It’s not a military institution,” she said.

Not that the military aspect will be lost. Sauchuk said the Commandant, the highest advisor of all things military at the school, will be her right-hand man (or woman). There will be an interim Commandant until a new one is hired.

The reputation of Valley Forge needs to be changed, she said. It’s not a school for “bad kids,” and it’s not just for people who want to go into the military (many don’t). It’s a school that creates leaders, she said, and that fact needs to be strongly conveyed.

Sauchuk said that she was always fascinated by the school, and when the opportunity arose to apply for President she did not hesitate. A national search firm conducted the search, which first narrowed candidates to seven, then to three. The three finalists each spent a day at the school speaking with cadets, staff and board members as well as making presentations about where they would take Valley Forge.

She said she is not daunted by the fact that she will be the first female President there.

“Many times I have been the only female at a table or the highest female executive,” she said. “As people get to know me… it becomes irrelevant.”