After working on campus 38 years and serving in more than a dozen positions, Dr. Jim Thomas said he still has the same focus: helping students graduate from college.
Thomas said his experiences in different jobs on campus help him understand how to get students to Lipscomb, how to keep them here and how to help them pay for their education.
“I do truly believe they’re a huge help here,” he said of some of his former roles. “I think all of that history and background converges to give me an understanding of how they all link together.”
“I think I’m someone who believes in what they’re trying to do,” he said. “I’m passionate about students graduating from college. I am so absolutely driven to helping college students graduate, but they’ve got to be a partner with me in that.”
Thomas, who currently acts as executive assistant to the president, graduated from Lipscomb in 1969. After completing three years in the military, he began teaching at the university in 1974.
Thomas said, of his jobs at Lipscomb, being chair of the speech communication department was one of the most enjoyable.
“Probably that was one of my favorite jobs, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “I thought as department chair you had a greater opportunity to influence students’ lives and the curriculum to help them develop.”
“My heart has always been on the teaching side,” he explained. “I just think that’s why you get into higher education—to help the students learn and grow and develop their talents to the fullest extent that they can.”
Thomas spent one year as dean of students and said it was a “nightmare.”
“I did not enjoy being dean of students at all,” he said. “We had a very different philosophy on campus at that time, and it was not one that fit well with what I wanted to be doing.”
Among his accomplishments, Thomas is credited with developing the idea for the Advance program, which orients new students to campus. Thomas said his concept for Advance was first implemented in 1989.
”It’s one of the programs I’m really proud of having instituted here,” he said.
Recognizing that college students will make some of the biggest decisions of their lives during their four years on campus, Thomas said he tries to encourage them to develop a good prayer life.
“If the person who created this world, the person who created you, the person who knows the future is available to you and you don’t talk with Him, there’s a real flaw in your reasoning,” he said.
Thomas said he takes his own advice to heart.
“I pray for strength to follow where I see [God] leading because it’s frequently not where I wanted to go,” he said. “But, if I know that my trust is in him and I know that my faith is in him, then all of those become OK.”
Thomas said his experiences show that Christianity presents the best approach to life.
“I’m really convinced at this point in my life that, looking back, the Christian lifestyle is one of the most effective approaches to enjoyment in this life,” he said. “It provides the greatest amount of joy and laughter and support for a lifestyle of any philosophy that I know.”
Thomas said he doesn’t want to push his views on students but instead tries to show what has benefited him.
“I never want to try to force my philosophy on anyone else,” he said, “but I do want to present it in such a way that I can say, ‘Here’s what I’ve seen work for me, and maybe it will work for you.’”
Thomas, who also spends part of each summer in California, teaching in Pepperdine University’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, said working with President Randy Lowry has given him some of his most “challenging and exciting years” at Lipscomb.
“For me, life here at Lipscomb has gotten better and better and better all the time,” he said. “I’m thrilled to death at the directions we’re going and what’s been accomplished in the last six years. I think it’s excellent.”
Throughout his time at Lipscomb, Jim Thomas has filled the following positions: Professor in Communication, Executive Assistant to the President, Professor in Graduate Education, Professor in Conflict Management, Instructor in Speech, Director of Advance, Director of University 1101, Director of Student Retention, Assistant Registrar, Registrar, Dean of Enrollment, Dean of Students, Chair of Department of Speech Communication, Dean of College of Education and Professional Studies, Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing.