He predicts that the next OWAW will closely resemble the last, with the addition of three to five signature programs run by the College rather than students or staff. He says he has secured a private donor to fund these programs, which may include a session on academic integrity or disaster preparedness.

FARM TO YARD

Raised on a farm in Ohio, McLoughlin has adopted a seemingly very different habitat in Harvard Yard for the past ten years.

Robert G. Doyle, an associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences who has known McLoughlin for nine years, credits his farm upbringing with imbuing him with the stick-to-itiveness that he brought to his work at Harvard.

“If you went to Broadway Garage at 8 a.m., you would see his car. At 7:30 at night, you would see his car,” Doyle says, comparing the hours McLoughlin put in at University Hall to the sunup to sundown schedule of a farmer.

McLouglin majored in zoology and neuroscience at Miami University of Ohio, with plans to become a doctor. His ambition changed, he says, due to the example set by his own dean of students, a mentor so close to him during his undergraduate years that he later officiated at McLoughlin’s wedding to his husband. That union, registered on the first day that same-sex couples could legally marry in Massachusetts, garnered McLoughlin a featured spot in a New York Times Magazine cover story on young gay men’s marital relationships.

Thanks in part to his former dean’s example, McLoughlin says he aspires to a position as a dean of students himself.

After trying his hand at working in the Office of Student Life, where he worked frequently with student leaders, and then in Dean Hammonds’ office, where he characterizes his work as “more behind-the-scenes,” McLoughlin says he wants a position in the future that involves direct work with students.

This year, he will be teaching graduate students at Boston College, where he recently completed his Ph.D. in higher education, as well as working on turning his dissertation into a book.

His experiences at Harvard, he says, “helped me focus on what I really enjoy doing and what I’ll seek in my next position—what I’m seeking now is certainly direct work with undergraduates, likely at a dean of students level, or a president level maybe eventually.”

Doyle makes similar observations about McLoughlin’s priorities. The position in Hammonds’ administration, Doyle says, “did not offer him a lot of opportunities to work with students, and I think he really missed that. ... He got an opportunity with Hammonds to find out what it’s like to run an institution. He’ll be very marketable in higher education when he’s been in so many different sides of working in a college.”

LAUDED TO LAMBASTED

Students seem to have noticed McLoughlin’s enthusiasm for working with them.

“He is very accessible,” says Alexandre J. Terrien ’11, who worked closely with McLoughlin while he served as a Crimson Key Society officer. “I would even sometimes show up to his office without a meeting time. I would just kind of drop by and say hi.”

Former UC President Johnny F. Bowman, Jr. ’11 recalls, “He was incredible, really helpful, really just enthusiastic about student life and was one of the few people that had a long term vision or goal on how to improve it.”