By EMILY CHRISTENSEN | Photos JULIE PAGEL DREWES ’90

Darrel D. Colson came to Wartburg amidst the uncertainties of the Great Recession; but a construction boom on campus, resulting in a new Science Center, which opened to students in 2004, and the Wartburg-Waverly Sports & Wellness Center, built in cooperation with the city in 2008, had positioned the college for a promising future.

A new strategic plan, Living Our Learning; Claiming Our Calling; Transforming Tomorrow, was nearing completion, and though Colson hadn’t been part of the early planning process, the overall values and vision behind the plan were ones he strongly believed in. In the coming years, the College would establish the first Research, Internship, and Creative Endeavor (RICE) Day and create new majors in growing areas of interest.

But even as the College was set to publicly launch its $75 million Transforming Tomorrow comprehensive campaign, it was becoming clearer that the enrollment bubble in Iowa had burst and private, liberal arts colleges would take the brunt of the fallout. Colson often turned to Wartburg’s history of resilience when addressing the concern.

“Our history shows us that there are many, many reasons why Wartburg should not exist …,” Colson said during a State of the College address in 2014. “But through it all, we demonstrated two vital qualities: A persistent, unyielding commitment to the mission of preparing young people for meaningful lives of leadership and service and a bold willingness to adapt, to innovate, to experiment.”

In the years that followed, Colson would continue to push the College to do the same. Throughout the successful Transforming Tomorrow campaign, the College would rebrand itself from “Be Orange” to “Worth It,” launch more academic programs and athletic teams, create several additional endowed chairs and professorships, and reimagine the first-year living and learning experience through the transformation of Clinton Hall into the McCoy Living & Learning Center.

The Higher Learning Commission affirmed the College’s accreditation and even approved Wartburg to proceed with plans to offer an online bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in music therapy. Even through a global pandemic, enrollment held strong and work progressed on a new strategic plan, Our Brightest Days: Realizing Purpose and Leading Change, that would guide the College’s decisions through much of the 2020s.

But for all of the changes Colson had a hand in moving forward through the last 13 years, he is quick to admit that the College, and its students, faculty, and staff, have changed him, as well. To end his final State of the College address, Colson said:

“I feel the pull, the call of neighbors, the call of God to do all in my power to make of this place a place of communion — of cooperation and coordination among all of us who work here, of belonging and empowerment for all of our students, creating for them not only a home in which they can take refuge during a pandemic, but a place of formation for the meaningful and positive change they will bring to the world — as a spirited expression of their faith and learning. I’ll end there, with deep thanks that I have a place in this community.”

What drew you to Wartburg?

At the time I was called to Wartburg, I was open to an opportunity within a Lutheran college or university. I knew the ins and outs of the Reformation, but what I didn’t fully understand was the way Lutheran theology influences Lutheran higher education. I learned some about that from a colleague at Pepperdine, who is a very well-known church historian. He got me connected to the Lilly Network (of Church-

Related Colleges and Universities), so I would go on these trips with him and without him, and I spent a lot of time on Lutheran campuses. He taught me about the concept of vocation and grace and how it plays out in the college setting. I was drawn toward Lutheran higher education because I believe so strongly in its foundational principles — the value of vocation, the freedom of intellectual inquiry, the power of conscience, radical hospitality. I became really enamored of Lutheran higher education.

Were your 13 years as president of Wartburg what you expected they would be?

The answer is both yes and no. I expected the role to be challenging, and it was. Perhaps more challenging than I’d thought it would be, of course. A couple of things certainly surprised me. Like most academics, I’m introverted, so I worried about how well I would perform the essential duties of representing the college in group or individual settings, but I learned how enjoyable it is to spend time with the members of this extended community.  While the relationships with alums and donors belong to the college and were only mine to steward, I found myself — as did Christy — genuinely coming to love the people who love this college.

While I appreciated that the duties of a president are varied and wide-ranging, I also underestimated how many topics and issues cross the desk and how quickly the president has to shift attention from one thing to another — to another — to another.

What is your favorite Wartburg memory?

I’d cite a bundle of memories. Our daughter always remarks that Wartburg has “soul.” Part of what makes up that soul is the composite of so many traditions that mark the rhythm of our academic year. Some are serious, such as St. Elizabeth Week, Christmas with Wartburg, MLK Week, the Graven Award, RICE Day. Some are a bit frivolous, such as the wacky Knighting Ceremony, Outfly, the late-night breakfasts. We could count many others — service trips during long breaks, the wrestling team’s duals in the desert, the ensembles’ trips abroad. Each of these forms my memory, and students’ memory, of Wartburg College, and each contributes to the sense that this is a special place.

What did you learn about yourself while serving as president?

When I felt the call to Wartburg and indeed accepted that call, I was intellectually committed to the principle of vocation, that is the firm position that each of our students is called to a meaningful life of leadership and service in some form or fashion. As I say, it does not matter whether a student will become a teacher or a banker, a coach or a doctor, for those are among the many roles in any community in which our students will lead and serve.

But being here these many years, both Christy and I have begun to feel that commitment quite deeply; what was an intellectual commitment, a principled professional opinion, has become part of our very souls. We feel the power of vocation in our hearts, our spirits. And we credit our students with having that impact on us; we now feel the same call to serve in the community that they feel; we’ve learned from this student body how important it is to lead and serve, and we now plan to turn our attention to that very thing. We hope to be as devoted to our community in retirement as our students and our alums are in theirs.

What has been your proudest moment?

This is hard to answer because there are so many. There are some obvious things to share. I was so proud of our Wartburg Choir one evening when they sang in the Great Hall at the Wartburg Castle, and brought our special guest, the prime minister of Thuringia, to tears. Indeed, we even saw that a couple of her bodyguards were weeping, too. Or the times when I’ve been able to stand alongside the wrestling team on the platform where they’ve received the trophy for winning the NCAA National Championship.

But there are other moments, too, that are less obvious. When I stand in front of students at RICE Day and they explain to me, very patiently with words I don’t understand, the nature of their research and the discoveries they’ve made. Or when I spent one Saturday morning with our Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and the Special Olympians they were helping. 

The common denominator in hundreds, maybe thousands, of these moments is students — spending time with our students as they do things that are important to them.

What has been your most challenging moment?

Definitely the various times we’ve reduced the budget and in doing so, reduced the number of positions within the faculty and staff.  It’s been difficult to look across the table at hard-working, dedicated colleagues and tell them that the college can no longer sustain their valuable work.

How has your faith changed since coming to Wartburg?

As an academic philosopher and amateur theologian, I understood the Lutheran doctrine of grace intellectually when I arrived, but living in this place, worshipping in this community, hearing the messages shared three times a week in Chapel and listening to our students sing sacred music have all helped me feel the doctrine of grace more deeply than I ever thought possible. I now comprehend, in a visceral way, what Martin Luther meant when he said that God’s grace has the paradoxical effect of liberating us so that we might become the servants of all.

You’ve visited Germany several times during your tenure. What will you take with you from those trips?

Neuendettelsau is such a special place, so authentically service oriented. I enjoyed going there so that I could reconnect with our founders, to understand the passion Wilhelm Löhe felt for serving the least advantaged. He had this knack of identifying people who were down, and then figuring out very entrepreneurially how to help them. That for me is the appeal. It’s interesting how the model has changed in pursuit of the eternal mission. What was a church-based ministry pursuing a vibrant mission has produced a vast nonprofit agency pursuing the same mission while employing hundreds of people and serving thousands. It’s fascinating to me how deeply these people feel the mission.

In Eisenach, I love Luther, and I love Lutheran theology, and I love Reformation history. But also it’s the relationship between the United States and Eisenach after World War II. I’m sure many know this, but because the college was connected in some way to the castle, the college persisted in remaining related to the castle. Former President Bob Vogel ’56, famously, kept making trips there with groups even when it was behind the Iron Curtain. Then once the Iron Curtain came down, we had this ready-made relationship born of the tenacity of Wartburg College that blended nicely with some serendipitous connections that people in Waverly, people who had been stationed there in World War II, had with Eisenach.

How did your background in philosophy help you through your presidency?

I devoted most of my scholarly energy to the philosophy of Socrates, most of which we know from Plato’s presentation of it. Essential to Socrates is his commitment to the revisability of knowledge. That is, in everyday terms, we must understand that all of our claims to know are revisable. Rational creatures that we are, we can draw sound conclusions on the basis of the evidence we have; but, being finite, we can never gather enough evidence to be certain about our conclusions.

So, my approach is always to ask questions, to prod, to poke, to challenge — myself most of all. We must make decisions, to be sure, but we must never be afraid to say that we erred and to reverse course when new information comes to light.

For me, it was important to understand, in all humility, how limited our grasp is — how limited my grasp is — so that I could see every one of my colleagues on this campus as genuine colleagues whose access to truth is no worse, and no better, than mine.

You were nicknamed PCol by a student. How did that happen and why do you think it stuck?

Many years ago, in 2012, I think, I traveled to the Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany, with Travis Bockenstedt ’09, who was serving on the faculty, and Shelby Granath ’13, a student in communications. Shelby was posting a blog about her travels, and she gave me the nickname “PCol,” which I liked. I’m always a bit self-conscious when people refer to me as “President Colson,” so I have encouraged folks, especially students, to use “PCol.” It sounds more like me, I think.

You are a reader. What was the best thing you’ve read in the last 13 years?

Well, I do love to read, but I’ve found it difficult to read nearly as much as I once did. It just seems as if the time is hard to find. When I sit down to read something of my choosing, I feel guilty, and before long, I find myself going back to the computer to catch up on email, or spreadsheets, or reports. I think of my reading as falling into two buckets: the reading for pure pleasure that I do before falling to sleep and the reading that’s more serious, hopefully educational. Purely for pleasure, I’ve been reading some authors in the science fiction/fantasy space: Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip K. Dick, and George R. R. Martin, for examples. I plowed through Martin’s massive five-volume series, A Song of Fire and Ice, at the snail’s pace of a couple of pages per night.

On the serious side, I read all kinds of stuff: Lutheran theology, including Luther himself; stuff about higher education; history; and culture. I especially like Luther’s Freedom of a Christian, and I return to it often. Lately I’ve read his letter on fleeing a plague more than a few times! I return often to the essays of Darrell Jodock on Lutheran higher education, too.

I tend to have several books going at once, which is not a good plan, but it is how I tend to do it. During the past year and a half, I’ve read widely in the fields of race and identity. Right now, I’m about two-thirds of the way through Willie James Jennings’s After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, about midway through Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, and I’ve just started Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration. I’ve also been reading a lot about the pandemic, and I’ve just finished Scott Gottlieb’s Uncontrolled Spread, and I’m halfway through Michael Lewis’s Premonition. The best thing I’ve read in recent years, hands down, is W. E. B. Dubois’s The Souls of Black Folk, which is one of those classics I thought I “knew,” but that I’d not read cover-to-cover. It is a powerful book, beautifully written and hauntingly relevant more than a century later. Dubois, you know, spent time in “brave old Eisenach, beneath the shadow of Luther’s Wartburg,” where, he says, he “emerged from the extremes of [his] racial provincialism.”

What’s next for you?

As I say, Christy and I will prioritize our family and our community. We’ll spend more time with grandchildren, hopefully attending more of their recitals and games and lessons and such; and we’ll try to follow the example of our students, emulating their model of service and leadership in the effort to help people in our hometown find more successes.

I’ll likely return to my writing. I’ve dipped my toe in the water a few times recently, publishing a piece here and there, and I’d like to do that a bit more. I feel as if I’ve learned some things about Lutheran higher education, as well as about the theological concept of vocation, and I’ll see if I can put some thoughts on paper for anyone who might be interested.