Bradley J. Lingo ’00, Grove City College’s new president, wants students to get the same Christian, conservative, excellent, and affordable education that profoundly shaped him when he was a student.
During his four years on campus, Lingo said he learned about the value and values of Western civilization and how to recognize what is good, true, and beautiful; connected with mentors who believed in him; and made friends who encouraged him in his faith.
The College’s distinctive learning and living experience provided a foundation that served Lingo well as he earned a degree from Harvard Law and achieved legal and academic success, and it promises to guide him as begins work this week as the College’s tenth president.
“Fidelity to our mission is not just our sacred responsibility – it’s also the magnet that will draw outstanding students and scholars to Grove City,” he said. “We want to be a place where students are known, loved, and discipled. I hope to see Grove City establish itself as the premier Christian college in this nation. And I expect that to happen. But if we disciple students, inspire them to pursue excellence, and launch them to serve and lead across this country – that’s success.”
This week, Lingo and his family – wife Yvonne and three daughters, Camille, 14, Elsie, 13, and Anna Grace, 9, and their springerdoodle Scout – began moving into the President’s House. It was a homecoming of sorts for the couple, who are natives of northeast Ohio and were high school sweethearts.
“It also feels like coming home in a deeper sense—a spiritual and intellectual homecoming. Grove City’s values are my values—because Grove City profoundly shaped my heart, mind, and soul. There’s no place that more closely aligns with the core of who I am and what I hope to teach not just my students but also my own children,” Lingo said.
Lingo comes to Grove City College from Regent University, where he was the dean of Regent Law. Under his leadership, the law school set records for enrollment, median incoming GPA and LSAT scores, U.S. News rankings, and employment outcomes. That experience and the “discipleship-based” approach to higher education he developed at Regent Law will be instructive in his new role, Lingo said.
“We serve a God who leaves the 99 to rescue the one and who knows the number of hairs on our heads. When the faculty, staff, and administrators commit themselves to knowing and caring for students the way God knows and loves each of us, strong outcomes follow,” he said.
Lingo will be the fifth alumnus to serve as president of the College and the third one in a row, after Paul J. McNulty ’80 and Richard G. Jewell ’67. “To do this job well, you must know and love Grove City. Those of us who are alums have a unique love for this school and an understanding of what makes it so special,” Lingo said.
Lingo was selected as the College’s 10th president in March after the College conducted a nationwide search. “Brad rose to the top of the search committee’s deep candidate pool because of a unique combination of experience and characteristics that make him the right leader for the next chapter of Grove City College’s story,” said Edward D. Breen ’78, chair of the College’s Board of Trustees.
“He brings a vibrant commitment to Christian orthodoxy, tight alignment with the College’s conservative vision and character, extraordinary professional experience and sophistication, and a keen understanding of higher education and the challenges and opportunities facing Grove City College.”
When asked about the school’s future, Lingo brought up J. Howard Pew. The Sun Oil Company executive and alumnus served on the Board of Trustees for more than 40 years until his death in 1971 and was a key financial supporter of the College for much of the 20th century.
“Mr. Pew would often say that he hoped our school would ‘encourage and inculcate in the minds and hearts of students an abiding faith in God and country, a love for freedom, a respect for truth, an acceptance of personal responsibility, and a desire to contribute to the betterment of the human race,” he said.
“When Mr. Pew spoke those words, he surely knew how much a school like ours was needed in this county. But even he could not have foreseen how much it would be needed today. Grove City’s singular combination of faith and freedom makes it a beacon of light and bastion of hope for our nation. That’s both a daunting challenge and tremendous opportunity that will define the future of the College.”
Lingo graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics from the College in 2000 and earned his J.D., with honors, from Harvard Law School, where he served as executive editor of The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. After law school, Lingo served as a law clerk to Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Before joining the Regent Law faculty in 2019, Lingo was a litigation partner at King & Spalding LLP and practiced law in the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson Dunn.
Lingo’s academic research and advocacy focus on constitutional law and religious liberty. His work has been published by Wake Forest Law Review, George Mason Law Review Forum, The Federalist Society, National Review Online, and World. He has filed briefs on behalf of Campus Crusade for Christ, Young Life, the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, and other religious organizations, and in the U.S. Supreme Court, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and Groff v. DeJoy. Lingo also litigated many pro bono and religious liberty matters while in private practice.