La Crosse professor behind nation's only servant leadership master's program earns hall of fame honor

LA CROSSE, Wis. (WXOW) — A longtime Viterbo University professor will be inducted into the Robert Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership Hall of Fame next week.

Distinguished Professor Tom Thibodeau will be among a group of individuals and organizations that have demonstrated a longstanding commitment to placing their primary focus on the well-being of others. He has been a faculty member at Viterbo since 1984 and is the founder of the university's Master of Servant Leadership program, the only of its kind in the nation.

But for Thibodeau, this honor isn't for him. It's for those who have sacrificed so that he could serve them.

"Service is love made visible and that everything that I've done over a course of years has been because of the hard work and the service of other people," Thibodeau said. "I ask myself each and every day, is my effort each and every day worth the sacrifice that people have made so that they can sit in my classroom? Everything that we do in our life, there's a level of mutuality that comes with giving and receiving."