Shirley had a vision for offering exceptional hospitality to our campus guests while also reaching beyond our campus to be good neighbors through positive engagement with our broader community. She encouraged and empowered me to use my gifts to help bring that vision to life, and I could never have imagined the fulfilling career at Houghton that her confidence in me fostered.

President Mullen has encouraged me to have confidence and a voice. She has allowed me to be part of leadership groups to learn how to think and process for the good of the whole and not just our individual areas. She trusted me, even as a Director, to help guide decisions and be a contributor of ideas. Her willingness to be open helped me grow.

President Mullen has become a mentor to me in countless ways. Her challenge to reimagine and enlarge my role in a way I hadn’t envisioned was the prompting I needed to push out of my comfort zone and find a voice that I’d never fully utilized before. I am so grateful for how she has poured into me and how she modeled it every day with graciousness, sincerity, kindness, patience and wisdom.

Shirley’s ability to communicate and cultivate space in the courageous middle has modeled for me and many of my colleagues how to listen for understanding and lead with the Truth and the Grace that comes from our Triune God alone. I believe that, because of her leadership and the mentoring she’s provided me, I am better prepared to join my faculty and staff colleagues to remain engaged in this important work at Houghton University and beyond.

As SGA President during my last two years at Houghton, I had the privilege of getting to meet with President Mullen every other week. These meetings had such an impact on me as a leader. President Mullen exemplified leading with grace, intellect, faith and care. My best memories of these meetings are the humbling experience of her praying for me, of being sent away with books, and of seeing her care and passion for Houghton University and especially its students.

One of the things that I will always carry from Dr. Mullen’s leadership is how she wields her courage and faith. I would not have come to Houghton had we not run into each other at a church in Indiana, and she chose to see it as a Providential encounter and pursued a further conversation with me. Getting to serve under a female president has led me to never question my own seat at the table of leadership.

I am so thankful for the mentor and kinship I had in President Mullen while a student at Houghton. She consistently supported me in positions of leadership and lifted me up with words of affirmation throughout them. Best of luck, President Mullen, in your retirement!

Shirley taught me so much in the five years I was privileged to serve under her leadership. Perhaps the greatest and most important was how to strike the tender balance between humility and confidence as a leader. I saw her navigate challenging situations using this artful space, and it was beautiful. Shirley believed in me, not only as a leader on her team, but as a woman and as a friend. She has served Houghton faithfully in one of the most tumultuous times in Higher Education, and, as an alumna and former employee of the college, I cannot offer high enough praise.

Women in leadership often feel the pressure to be all things to all people, to be the Superwoman in every room. Shirley urged me to nuance my ideas of God’s call in liberating ways, to listen for God’s call to serve a particular community rather than to be the perfect ideal of a professor, leader, etc. She modeled for me, in concrete ways, what it looks like, instead, when a gifted woman leads out of her specific strengths and builds effective partnerships with those whose gifts complement her own.

One of the most impactful things I learned from President Mullen was the importance of what she deemed “placeholders.” Being someone who had always been passionate about many causes, Shirley recognized within me the tendency to want to do it all despite never having sufficient time. So, Mullen encouraged me to have placeholders in my life—little things like checking the news or having coffee with friends, playing piano for five minutes a day or reading a book for fun—so that, no matter how busy I got, I would hold onto all of those pieces of my heart and the things in the world that mattered. Even if one certain vocation took up most of my time, I would still be a person who valued knowing what was going on in the world, a person who valued the relationships in my life, good music and learning. President Mullen taught me about placeholders, but really, her largest impact on me was that, despite her insanely busy schedule, she always had a placeholder for mentoring me.