President's Report - Gordon State College

3
President’s Report
Making His Way to Gordon
President Max Burns traveled many roads
before arriving at Gordon
by Peter Boltz
Although the road between Sylvania and Barnesville, Ga., is not all that long, the route that Gordon State College’s new
president, Max Burns, took between the two cities is much longer by leagues and leagues. And these travels, both physical
and cerebral, are what give him his sense of mission as the College’s third president, since the school was assumed
into the University System of Georgia in 1972.
“I came from a family with limited resources living in a rural environment in southern
Georgia,” he said. “My mother was educated; my father was blue collar. We were a
two-income family with my mother working as a public health nurse in Screven Co.,
Ga., and my father driving a bread delivery truck for the Derst Baking Co. of Savannah.
But my mother died at age 49 when I was 10, and then we really did have limited
“I came from a family with
resources, because my mother made more money than my father.”
limited resources living in a
To hear the way he describes his mother and father draws attention to what is perhaps
the central value of President Burns’ professional life. His mother he describes as
rural environment in southern
educated; his father, as blue collar. His mother, Edith Claire Nix Burns, was a nurse; his
Georgia,” he said. “My mother father, Othell Maxie Burns, was a delivery truck driver. Both of them firmly committed
was educated; my father to education, especially for their children.
Widowed, it was his father who was the driving force behind Burns and his elder
was blue collar. We were a sister Barbara to excel in learning and to finish college.
Burns chuckles when he remembers something his father would say.
two-income family with my
“You see what I have to do to make a living,” his father would “counsel” him. “If
mother working as a public you end up like me, I’ll jerk a knot on your head.”
Despite having only an 11 th grade education and coming from a struggling cottongrowing
family, Mr. Burns put his two children through college as well as several of
health nurse in Screven Co.,
Ga., and my father driving a his sisters, including one of Max’s favorite aunts, his 92-year-old Aunt Louise. And for
the record, Max’s grandparents, John C. and Daisy Miller Burns of Aiken, S.C., had
bread delivery truck for the 12 children.
Derst Baking Co.”
His sister went to Bob Jones University for a degree in accounting, and Burns went
to Georgia Institute of Technology for a degree in industrial engineering. And, perhaps
remembering what his father said about jerking a knot on his head, he went on for a
master’s, then a Ph.D. from Georgia State.
Besides his father, Burns credits his academic success to his sister who is now an accountant
for a regional health company in Logan, W.Va. You might call it sibling rivalry