“Make yourself big when you enter a room, when you meet a bear in the woods. Make yourself big. Meet the eyes.”

Roger Epp’s poetic meditations about the best, the hardest, the loneliest times of leading a small university campus through significant change are depicted in a series of elegant yet understated prose pieces, alongside images by his life partner, Rhonda Harder Epp. Taking a candid look at the many challenges such a position brings, Roger Epp humanizes, scrutinizes, and upholds the integrity of academic administrative work. Only Leave a Trace will resonate with those who work in universities, hold leadership roles in them, or care about the connections between higher education, students, and place.

Illustrated by: Rhonda Harder Epp