“I’m not an early, early riser,” Dr. Rosalie Mirenda says. “I like to be in my bed until 6 o’clock or so, and then I get up to exercise.” Mirenda, 79, is the outgoing president of Neumann University, a co-ed, Catholic Franciscan school with a verdant campus in Aston, Pa. The school’s fifth president and the second layperson to hold the job, she plans to retire in June.

She starts her morning on the treadmill because she spends much of her day sitting at a desk or meeting table, trying to help the school “expand the human capacity that gives our lives passion and purpose,” as she phrased it in 1996 when she assumed the office. Each evening, she eats a light dinner and uses the burst of energy to respond to emails from earlier in the day.