Jill Tiefenthaler was hired over a year ago as the 13th president of Colorado College, and has run the school since July, 2011. But her status as the new head of the college wasn’t complete until Saturday, when the faculty finally inaugurated their boss.

Dozens of professors, alumni, students and friends packed Shove Memorial Chapel Saturday for Tiefenthaler’s official crowning as the head of the college. Faculty members in dark academic robes, along with graduates from every CC class since 1955, walked solemnly down the center aisle of the chapel for the rites.

Guest speakers ranged from Congresswoman Diana DeGette down to students, and all said the new president had excelled during the “year of listening” she just completed. Tiefenthaler, after assuming her new role, visited 13 cities, talking with alumni and student families about the school and what could improve.

“Jill, we’re with you all the way,” said Kathryn Mohrman, a former president of CC.

Pamela Shockley-Zalabek, chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, hailed Tiefenthaler as “visionary, inclusive and welcoming,” and Alan Harris, the president of the CC Alumni Association, said the new president has already put up a “spirited defense of liberal arts education.”

Tiefenthaler said she was honored by the ceremony.

“Today, I consider myself the luckiest woman on Earth,” she told the crowd, to happy applause.

She talked about the college’s abilities, its accomplishments, the beauty of the mountains, and said she wished she could “bottle up” CC and “send it to our alumni, wherever they may be around the world.”

“This place is not your typical liberal arts college,” Tiefenthaler said. “Colorado College is a living model of what a learning community should be.”

One of the school’s students, she said, lost “everything” when his family’s house burned down during the Waldo Canyon fire. But the student had written her afterward, and said the college and helped him move forward.

The new president’s address wasn’t all roses. She didn’t sugarcoat the difficulties higher education faces, including need financial obstacles and a deepening public apathy toward colleges.

“We are in a time of enormous transition. Professors must try to do more with less,” she said.Much of the college is running off a $500 million endowment, and the college spends more than it takes in with tuition. The college spends $25 million a year that it would be saving if the government hadn’t cut hundreds of millions in aid to higher education, she said.

Tiefenthaler warned that 57 percent of the public now thinks that colleges aren’t worth the cost. But she also said that the unemployment rate among college graduates is 6.3 percent, while the rate for those without a degree is more than 24 percent.

That, she said, means college educations are well worth the investment. And CC, she said, is a good place to start.—Contact John Schroyer: 476-4825Twitter @JohnschroyerFacebook Gazette John Schroyer

After spending a year listening to and getting acquainted with the Colorado College community, CC president Jill Tiefenthaler is formally inaugurated to the position Saturday, September 22, 2012 at Shove Memorial Chapel. Michael Ciaglo/The Gazette Photo by MICHAEL CIAGLO, THE GAZETTE

MICHAEL CIAGLO