"For the rest of my life I will always be an Aggie. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, as long as I live I will bleed maroon"

By Sommer Hamilton

My diploma is signed by the secretary of defense. That’s what 48,553 new and recent Aggie graduates have been telling one another around the globe this month.

Photos from top: President Gates talks to students gathered outside Rudder Tower in December. Middle: Gates hands out a diploma during a 2006 commencement ceremony. Bottom: Gates with his wife, Becky, and Student Body President Nic Taunton, a finance major, at a December send-off organized by students and yell leaders Photos : Allen Pearson

In his last official act as Texas A&M University’s president, Robert M. Gates handed out the final diplomas at December commencement before flying back to Washington, D.C., to be sworn in as one of President Bush’s most important advisors.

Just a few months into his fourth standards-changing year at the helm of Texas A&M, Gates was called to fill retiring Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s post. As he takes stock of the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan this spring, the new secretary faces a challenge far greater than leading a major research university toward its future. But Aggies can rest assured that Texas A&M has left its mark on its erstwhile president.

“As the end of my service as president draws near, please know that for the rest of my life I will always be an Aggie. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, as long as I live I will bleed maroon,” Gates said in a farewell e-mail to students and faculty in December. “A final request to all in the Texas A&M family: Never forget who we are and where we came from. Never forget the Aggie Code of Honor. And never forget the obligation of duty and honor and country.”

Right man for the job
Mays professors tell their business students that leadership isn’t really about charm or your ability to get the job done. It’s that elusive quality that makes people trust in your decisions and believe in the vision you’ve created for them.

Gates is a case study in that kind of leadership, built on loyalty and shared governance and bent to the task of pushing the organization forward. While other universities were battening down the hatches to weather the storm of 2002 and 2003’s economic downturn, A&M was expanding, throwing its doors open in traditional Aggie welcome.

In 2003, Gates championed a dramatic $40 million faculty reinvestment plan that will bring more than 400 new professors to campus by the end of 2008. The ambitious faculty hiring plan has so far brought 39 new tenured and tenure-track professors to business, reinvigorating the research and pedagogy in each discipline at Mays.

The Aggieland welcome itself has been magnified in the former president’s efforts to create a more inclusive and supportive campus for all Texans. His establishment of the Regents Scholars program ensures that every year, 600 high-achieving first-generation freshmen from families with lower incomes—regardless of other factors such as race—have funding for school.

Connections with freshmen at Mays, especially Gates’ Regents Scholars, has expanded a small peer mentorship network of 250 in the halls of Wehner into a full-blown community of 1,000 active students and faculty living the mission of service and friendship in every classroom.

Gates refocused the efforts of the university and revitalized the way education is run and faculty and staff are involved in the process of shared governance. He has clarified A&M’s role, and its brand, as the producer of skilled workers and thinkers who welcome community service, one another, and the challenges of the future. No Aggie who has spent five minutes in candid conversation with Gates would doubt his ability to also refocus the American mission in Iraq and revitalize the way the military is run.

President Bush says much the same. "We are a nation at war," Bush said following Gates’ swearing-in as secretary. "And I rely on our secretary of defense to provide me with the best possible advice and to help direct our nation's armed forces as they engage the enemies of freedom around the world. Bob Gates is the right man to take on these challenges. He'll be an outstanding leader for our men and women in uniform."

Duty calls
No war zone is ever like the mahogany-lined offices of academia, but Gates knows his business.

The university’s 22nd president was CIA director under former President George H.W. Bush from 1991 to 1993. He joined the CIA in 1966, serving as an analyst specializing in the former Soviet Union, and is the only director to rise through the ranks from an entry-level position. He was already involved in the current Bush administration as part of the congressional Iraq study group, which presented its findings to the President in December.

When news broke Nov. 8 that Gates was the nominee, Mays faculty and staff gathered in clumps in hallways, crowded around the lobby TVs, and monitored CNN.com from their computers. It was bittersweet: Of course President Bush would want a leader like Gates. But Gates, the consensus has held on campus, is the greatest Aggie president since Gen. Earl Rudder—whose sweeping changes in the 1960s ushered in non-reg and women students and gave Texas A&M a chance to become the large and in-charge research institution it is today.