Robert M. Gates '65 has dedicated his life to public service since graduating from the College of William and Mary. The current Dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, Gates had served either in the CIA or the National Security Council from 1966 to 1993.

He served six presidential administrations, including tenure as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He is the only career officer, and the only intelligence analyst, in the CIA's history to rise from an entry-level position to become the agency's director.

Raised in Wichita, Kan., Gates decided at a young age that he would go 'East' to attend college. When he announced his eastward intentions, his parents were not happy with his decision. They believed a good, low-cost education could be earned near home at a Kansas university. Undeterred, the young Gates, who wanted to be a doctor, narrowed his choices to Johns Hopkins and William and Mary.

A good friend of his, who was a few years older, wrote him a series of serendipitous letters that spoke highly of the nation's second oldest university and convinced the impressionable Kansan to go east to William and Mary. Also a factor, according to Gates, the price of the school was affordable. Serendipity would continue to follow Gates through his career at the College and beyond.

Gates' freshmen year in 1961-1962 was pure pre-med: biology, chemistry, math, English and German. When he wasn't studying to become a M.D., he worked to pay for his college tuition as a dormitory supervisor, school bus driver and assistant scout master. On campus he involved himself in charitable events for his service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega.

Gates also walked the hallow grounds of the old campus and the historical lanes of Colonial Williamsburg. He took note of the names of the American civic heroes on the many memorial plaques on campus: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Monroe, Wythe and Tyler. As his freshman year waned, the atmosphere of the history-laden campus, like an amalgamist's laboratory, began mixing with the charged-atmosphere of the era: Kennedy's call to national service, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, nuclear escalation, the Civil Rights movement.

The young man from Wichita soon found himself pausing about his direction, which path should he choose, medicine or public service. Like so many others who had found their calling to serve their nation in the shadow of the Wren Building, Gates chose the path of national service. In the fall of 1962 Gates switched from pre-med to history, his curriculum filled with history, government, German and Russian. Serendipity had struck again, this time for a man as well as a nation.

His new role models were American intellectual history professor Joseph L. Brent, German history professor Dietrich Orlow, Civil War history professor Ludwell Johnson and famed lecturer and department chair, Harold Fowler, who taught Tudor and Stuart England. Gates envisioned himself a college professor, teaching the next generation the lessons of history. After graduating he earned a masters in Russian and Easter European studies at the University of Indiana.

After two years in the U.S. Air Force, he was hired as an analyst/arms-control expert by the CIA, but kept himself focused on his overall goal of being a university professor by independently entering the doctoral history program at Georgetown University. Two weeks after graduating in 1974, with a dissertation on Sino-Soviet relations, serendipity struck again. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger asked him to join the national security council staff at the White House working on U.S.-Soviet affairs. He explained to his wife it would only be a few years and then he would return his focus to the classroom and his dream of teaching. The rest is history. Twenty-five years later, after retiring as director of the CIA, Robert Gates is in the classroom, the Dean of the Bush School of Government.

Reflecting on his career, Gates gives a great deal of credit to his alma mater: "I think that the whole Williamsburg/William and Mary experience imbued me with a special sense about this country. They prepared the ground in terms of a career in public service -- a noble calling."