College Days: President Tim Gilmour

Joseph (Tim) Gilmour ran against Joe Biden in an election…back in college that is. Gilmour and Biden both attended the University of Delaware in the early 1960s where both ran for class presidents. Both lost, but both went on to govern in some way.

“We both ran for class president, he junior, me sophomore, and we both lost,” said Gilmour. “But I guess his politics have been pretty successful [since then].”

While Biden worked his way through the U.S. Senate to the White House with President Obama, Gilmour worked his way through years of schooling to become the head of Wilkes University.

Gilmour traveled just 11 miles away from his house to attend the University of Delaware from 1962-1966 as a history major.

“I originally wanted to be a lawyer, and then over time I realized I wanted to work in higher education,” said Gilmour. “I don’t think I was a person with a huge amount of focused direction, but I had enough direction that I wanted to explore a lot of areas of learning to become an educated person.”

He credits his academic successes while in school to his adviser. While the role of an adviser is to help pick classes and advise on academic issues, Gilmour believes his adviser did more.

“I had an excellent adviser who had enormous patience with me, and in a very quiet, almost non-directive way would get me to think about things I should do,” said Gilmour.
Being heavily involved was not the only thing into which Gilmour put extra time while at school. He also put time into girls.

“I enjoyed the whole dating scene,” said Gilmour. “In this [dating scene] there were probably four fairly serious relationships. You wanted to date someone so you could bring them to the fraternity spring event. At least that’s how I operated.”

Like many young adults, Gilmour took break-ups hard, admitting he was even in a “tail spin” for almost a year over one particular girl.

“I wasn’t good when it was over,” said Gilmour. “I spent almost a whole year in a tail spin. I was feeling sorry for myself. My mother kept yelling at me, ‘Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Get out there’."

When Gilmour wasn’t attending fraternity parties off campus or entering the dating game, he was focused on his classes. While most of his studies focused around the area of history, several classes not history-related aided to his ever-changing views of the world and society in general.

“Although I was not a dedicated student, in the way you think about people being, I learned a tremendous amount from [the professors] of several courses,” said Gilmour. “They were both challenging and enormously interesting to me.”

Gilmour took his less than 3.0 grade point average and soaked up the lessons being taught both in and out of the classroom. Despite having a GPA of less than 3.0, Gilmour still tackled courses, like a senior seminar, that he was convinced he could not get into.
“[My adviser] said one day when I was looking for classes, ‘You’re not looking at the honors seminar.’  I said, ‘Well, I don’t qualify.’ And he told me I was going anyway,” said Gilmour.

Gilmour had his hands full while at Delaware, being in student government, the head of a fraternity and part of Army ROTC, just to name a few of his extracurriculars.

“I did a really good job at the extracurricular,” said Gilmour. “I think I learned a lot about how you interact to get things done [with a group of people].”

Gilmour’s leadership roles came naturally for him, especially through his heading a fraternity.

While he admits spending a good deal of time partying off campus with his frat brothers, he and his “brothers” were kept in line by their frat house mother, Mrs. Carter.

“She was five foot nothing, but boy did she keep us in line,” said Gilmour.

The straight-laced Mrs. Carter must have rubbed off on Gilmour, because he was determined and able as he earned his undergraduate degree.

His initial plan after graduation was to go to the beach to spend some time relaxing with his friends.

His plan was quickly thwarted as he got a letter the day before his graduation to report for Army training.

“I got this letter the Saturday before the Sunday that I graduated informing me that I was to be at Fort Knox the next Tuesday,” said Gilmour.

Despite having summer plans quickly changed, being summoned for Army duty was not as jolting as his undergraduate graduation.

“College graduation had a tremendous impression on me,” said Gilmour. “I thought, ‘Oh, now I have to go out and do something.’ And it’s really kind of daunting and a little scary.”

He did go out and do many things, including earning his master’s and doctorate degrees. His roads from Delaware, to the Army, to his advanced degrees led him to Wilkes, where he holds the highest position at the University.

While he may not hold one of the highest positions in our government, Gilmour worked truly hard to both learn and play while at the University of Delaware. He took full advantage of his college days.

In his own words, Gilmour chit chats with Vice President Biden:

After had we [Joe Biden and I] had lost the election, we ran into each other in the library. I had gone into the library to study, but Joe was a wonderful kind of spirit just saying, ‘Eh, come on! We lost. Oh well.’ We both lost, but it was still a really good experience. So, we said, ‘What are we going to do next?’