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In her first semester on campus, she launched the Bridge to
the Future, a plan that recognizes the need to raise $30 million
over three years in order to provide time for the college to reach a
stronger and sustainable financial position. Working with BSC’s
advancement team, she has made it a personal priority to meet as
many alumni, parents, and current and future students as possible,
traveling almost weekly across Alabama and the South to do so.
She has reached out to partner with others in the community
and the city to find ways to assist Birmingham’s western area.
In conjunction with faculty and the provost, she is helping to
shepherd new programs, including the much-anticipated Creative
and Applied Computing major, into existence for fall 2017.
“The faculty is so creative, and there are many other ideas on the
drawing board,” she said.
Another item she introduced as a “high priority” when she
arrived last June—implementing articulation agreements with local
community colleges to simplify transfers for students—has been
put in place. This spring, under her direction, the college launched
a new marketing campaign, “Rise to Your Potential,” to help raise
awareness of BSC’s strengths across the state and region. In her
usual style, she credits members of the senior team with doing the
heavy lifting on these and other projects. And finally, during her
first ten months, she has worked with the college’s financial team,
the Board of Trustees, and local banks to lead a restructuring that
reduced the college’s debt by almost 25%.
“Being a college president is not something I ever planned on.
In fact, as others can confirm, it was something I carefully avoided
for many years,” Flaherty-Goldsmith
said. “During my long career in higher
education, I had worked directly for
seven presidents, closely enough to
know that this is a role that overtakes
your life. There is only one college
that could have enticed me to fill this
role, and that is BSC. It grabbed my
heart when I arrived on the Hilltop in
2010, and it hasn’t let go since.”
That’s saying a lot, considering
Flaherty-Goldsmith devoted much
of her career to the University of
Alabama—her alma mater—as well
as the University of Alabama at
Birmingham, where she earned her
MBA, and the University of Alabama
System. She joined UAB’s staff as
a budget analyst in 1980 and spent
13 years there in progressively more
demanding positions, left to become
vice chancellor for financial affairs for
the UA System, then returned again
from 1996-1998 as interim VP for
finance and administration while also
continuing as vice chancellor.
“The Board convinced me that
UAB needed me to come back for a
period of time to help the interim
president lead a restructuring in
Finance and Administration, and I
was honored to do what I could—
tired, but honored,” she smiled.
She also said “yes” when recruiting as vice president and chief
operating officer of the University of Connecticut in 2003, putting
her plans for retirement on hold. “My previous chancellor—then
UConn’s president—convinced me that he and the university
needed what I had to offer, so I moved to the Northeast,” she
said. While there, she helped the university restructure several
departments, strategically save costs, and gain control of a troubled
$2-billion construction project.
Flaherty-Goldsmith, or LFG as she is more frequently called,
first arrived on the Hilltop in a similar role, when BSC’s Board of
Trustees hired her as a consultant in 2010 after financial issues came
to light. When BSC’s 13th president, Gen. Charles C. Krulak, asked
her to stay on as his chief of staff, she again took her own advice and
said yes. In that role, she worked with the president to restructure
the college’s leadership team, helped achieve record levels of
fundraising, and was instrumental in BSC’s reaccreditation process.
“There is no person more critical, more important, to what has
happened here than Linda,” then-BSC President Gen. Charles C.
Krulak said at her going away party. “She saved this college. What
she’s done for this school ought to be written up, and it will be
written up for the future.”
Educational power
It was a long way to come for a woman who grew up poor
in rural Mississippi. Her mother—her father abandoned the
family when Linda was eight—raised Linda and six of the eight
siblings who were still at home. She credits the determination
Butch Rowell ’66 of Hoover and President Linda Flaherty-Goldsmith at the 50
Milestone Reunion celebration during
last fall’s Homecoming/Reunion/Family Weekend.