Larson seeks higher profile for Bentley

Bentley College president Gloria Cordes Larson has been on the job for eight months but will be inaugurated tomorrow. (Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff/FILE 2007)

If Bentley College president Gloria Cordes Larson ever thought that working in the academic world would be more leisurely than her previous job - guiding public policy at a prestigious Boston law firm, Foley Hoag - those illusions are long gone.

"I'm running faster and working harder, and at a faster pace than any other world I've been in," said Larson, who compared the job's challenges to "drinking from a fire hose."

"Some days I feel like the mayor of a small town," said Larson, Bentley's first female president.

Larson will be officially inaugurated as president during a ceremony at 2 p.m. tomorrow in the school's Dana Center, eight months after she took the reins of the Waltham campus. Official greeters include Governor Deval Patrick, whose transition team she cochaired, and the CEO at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Cleve L. Killingsworth.

In her first semester, Larson received about 75 invitations from various business and community organizations to serve as a keynote speaker, but was only able to accept about a quarter of them, her office said, focusing the remainder of her time on the college and its alumni. She's racked up thousands of miles traveling to corporate board meetings, conferences, and alumni events from Fitchburg to Florida.

It's not unusual for her to be among the last to leave Bentley's administration building at night, turning off the lights on her way out. But Larson said she likes the responsibility associated with her job. And it helps that she has a short commute home. Since January, she has lived in the president's house, right on campus, with her husband, Allen Larson, and their two Labrador retrievers, Sally and Harry Jr.

After Larson's predecessor, Joseph G. Morone, departed to the corporate world in fall 2005, Bentley's trustees decided they wanted to replace him with someone who could turn the college's focus outward after years of reinforcing its infrastructure.

"We felt we were very well positioned there, and what we needed to spend more time on was working with alumni, working with organizations in Massachusetts, taking the success of Bentley and making Bentley well known around the country as well as in New England," said trustee Cynthia M. Deysher, who cochaired the president search committee.

The process lasted more than a year, as the committee fielded candidates from as far away as Europe and Asia. But Deysher said that after she and cochairman and fellow trustee Mark Skaletsky sat down for lunch with Larson, her name went to the top of their list.

"She had a broader view of Bentley, and a broader view of what Bentley could be," Deysher said.

Larson's years in public service and business have left her in possession of an enviable Rolodex of contacts. She served as secretary of economic affairs and secretary of consumer affairs and business regulation during the Weld administration, and spent 10 years as a senior official at the Federal Trade Commission - the last year as deputy director of consumer protection. She was the first woman to chair the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and in 2003, Boston magazine named her the first of the "100 Most Powerful Women in Boston."

Her academic background before Bentley was limited primarily to her own education - an undergraduate degree from Vassar College and a juris doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law. But Larson said that, in a way, her status as an "outsider" has helped her: It has made her work to earn the trust and respect of faculty, instead of assuming their fealty.

"What I'm finding about the world of academia is that it's particularly important to build consensus around a set of goals. I definitely have worked to do that here," she said.

Larson still considers herself to be in the listen-and-learn stage of her tenure, so was mum on any major changes that might be in the works. But she said that finding ways to more broadly disseminate research done at Bentley is among her priorities, as well as leading a major capital campaign in conjunction with the college's centennial in 2017.

Leading a college of roughly 5,600 students wasn't part of Larson's original career plan. But she accepted the job, she said, because it was a chance to take all of her observations as an employer and policy maker and put them to practice in forming the next generation of business leaders - people who could apply Bentley's lessons on ethics, corporate responsibility, and sustainable management, which encourages responsible use of labor, materials, and the environment.

"There's probably nothing more rewarding," she said, "than looking at a class about to graduate that's ready to go into their communities and make a difference."

Stephanie V. Siek can be reached at ssiek@globe.com.