GROVE CITY — Less than a year into his tenure as Grove City College president, Paul McNulty is having a good time.

“It's been very enjoyable. There's a fantastic culture here,” he said.

McNulty, 57, is the ninth president in the college's history and the fourth alumnus to serve as president. He was named to the position in May, replacing Richard Jewell, who was president from 2003 to 2014.

McNulty started on the job in August. He has found people on campus to be friendly and hardworking.

“We have kind of a can-do spirit,” McNulty said. “There's a warmth and friendliness.”

But he said the pace is fast and hectic: “The job of the president is just nonstop.”

He said this is because the president deals with everyone on campus all the time. He tries to be accessible to the students, having meals daily with students, meeting with them in his office and e-mailing with them.

“My approach is to be engaged with them on a day-by-day basis,” McNulty said.

He said the role of the president is to continue to develop the school's goal and to communicate it.

“I think the president is both the developer and the voice of the school's vision,” McNulty said.

He also said the president is the chief manager of the school's business and has to think of the best organizational and management approaches to keep the school running properly.

A third aspect of the job is to maintain campus morale.

“The president is in a unique position to affect morale — by caring about the people, by taking an interest in their lives,” McNulty said. “If you sit in your office and just look at it as a business, you wouldn't expect there to be high morale.”

A former U.S. Deputy Attorney General and U.S. Attorney, and most recently a partner at law firm Baker & McKenzie, McNulty said his transition from law to academia has not been hugely difficult.

If he had gone from a legal career in a law firm, he said it would be harder because he mostly would have been doing cases, but he would not have been involved in managing people or dealing with department morale.

He said his career at the Department of Justice involved managing people, which has made the transition relatively simple.

“I would see my work as the U.S. Attorney as very similar,” McNulty said.

McNulty was working at the Department of Justice at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“It was a time in our lives that was unlike anything you expect to experience,” McNulty said.

At the time of the attacks, he effectively was the No. 3 man in the department. He said he recalls standing in the office of Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson watching footage of the attacks. Shortly after that, the FBI and U.S. Marshals told Thompson to go someplace safe and told McNulty to stay and run the office.

McNulty stayed with a core team while the people in the rest of the building were evacuated. The team monitored the situation, which McNulty said was intense.

Three days later, he went to the Pentagon, which he said was still smoking from the attack. At the time, McNulty said no one was sure who would be arrested for the attacks or how prosecutions would occur.

Zacarias Moussaoui, who worked with the Sept. 11 hijackers, was arrested in November, and then John Walker Lindh, an American who went to work with the Taliban, was arrested in January.

“Every month brought a new case and a new challenge,” McNulty said. “For the next four and a half years, it was just one unfolding story of new twists.”

He said the department came up with a lot of ideas as to how to prevent terrorist attacks.

He said working on these types of prosecutions was different from more typical federal prosecutions, but he said a lot of it still was the same criminal justice process.

In 2005, McNulty became the deputy attorney general.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez asked him if he was interested in the job. McNulty told him he would like to think about it.

What caused him to decide to take it was seeing a 1963 photograph of Vivian Malone, one of the first black students at the University of Alabama, escorted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to school.

He said it was pretty amazing that someone in that position could be a part of history.

“Do I have any choice but to take this job?” McNulty asked himself.

He told Gonzalez he would take the job, and he was confirmed several months later.

McNulty said that position was hard, and he said he was responsible for most of the day-to-day decisions and work of the department.

“Every difficult problem comes to the deputy attorney general's desk because the attorney general is flying around the country representing the department,” McNulty said. “Everybody would say that the deputy's job is one of the hardest jobs in Washington.”

However, he said the job was rewarding, and he liked the department.

He said 2007 was a difficult time for the department. He announced in May of that year he would leave. That was the same week that he gave the commencement address at the college.

After that, he received a call from Baker & McKenzie, one of the largest law firms in the world. He accepted a job there later in the year.

When Jewell announced he would be retiring from the college in 2013, the search committee tasked with finding the next president nominated McNulty for the job.

He said the college has been important to him over the years. He served as a college trustee from 2004 to 2014.

When he was 18 and attending Baldwin High School near Pittsburgh, he was not entirely sure where he wanted to go to college. All he knew was he wanted to be a lawyer.

He was a cross country runner and had gotten some letters from colleges. The coach at Grove City wrote him three letters. He came up to the campus, took a quick tour and felt that he would like to attend.

“I really didn't know much about Grove City College, or what I was in for, from a positive perspective, at all,” McNulty said.

After graduating from the college in 1980, he got his law degree from the Capital University School of Law in 1983.

He immediately began to work in the federal government.

McNulty officially will be inaugurated Monday. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former U.S. Solicitor General and independent council on several cases Ken Starr, who now is the president of Baylor University, will speak.

McNulty helped Ashcroft get ready for his hearing to be confirmed as attorney general in 2001.

McNulty and Starr both worked in the Department of Justice when George H.W. Bush was president.

“Ken Starr is a remarkable man,” McNulty said.

When Starr went to testify in front of the House of Representatives during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, McNulty helped him prepare.

At Grove City College, McNulty is working on the college's $90-million capital campaign, which will end soon. The next capital campaign is expected to begin later.

“One of our top issues will be the assessment of all the needs we have,” McNulty said.

He said his No. 1 goal is to continue to raise the national profile of the college.

“I think we need to do a better job about telling people what we are doing,” McNulty said.

He said the college will be completely different from other colleges, saying the model of higher education in general is vastly different from the college's.

McNulty said other schools have high tuition they charge students who can afford it, and then use that money to help discount school for students who cannot afford the full price, a model he said is not sustainable.

He said the college is very transparent about what it charges and has financial aid that comes from the college's endowment rather than other student's tuition.

He said the college has a great culture and great values.

“I like to say we are conservative, but also very civil and caring,” McNulty said.

McNulty and his wife, Brenda, have three daughters. Their son died of cancer in 2012 at the age of 26.