The students call her GLars, and the rest of us know her as Gloria Larson.

When Larson (above) steps down as president of Bentley University in June, she will be gone but not forgotten. Next week, the Waltham school will rename a signature program in her honor: the Gloria Cordes Larson Center for Women and Business.

It is a fitting tribute to the first woman to head Bentley, but also to someone who has spent a lifetime as a trailblazer, from her stints as a two-time cabinet secretary in the Weld administration to the first woman to chair the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority.

The 67-year-old lawyer has worn so many hats and seamlessly navigated public and private sectors — prior to Bentley she was a partner at the law firm Foley Hoag — that it can be hard to sum up the entirety of her career.

So I punted to Deval Patrick, whom Larson endorsed for governor in 2006, giving up her Republican stripes to do so.

“What’s amazing and beautiful and inspiring about Gloria is this notion of the public citizen,’’ said Patrick, who will be Bentley’s graduation speaker this year.

After winning the governorship, Patrick tapped Larson to co-lead his transition team. He praised her ability to build connections among so many communities and serve as a bridge.

“That’s a very special thing in any place, particularly here,’’ said Patrick. “We get a little silo-ed, a little inward looking here.’’

Larson arrived at Bentley in 2007, drawn by the chance to shape a generation of millennials whose own triple bottom line — people, planet, and profits — resonated with her. She figured there was no better place to do this than at a school known for its business focus.

“I have not been disappointed,’’ Larson told me in an interview in her campus corner office recently. Millennials “really do want to be the agents of change in the business world.’’

Larson was brought in to raise the profile of Bentley, an institution that can get easily overshadowed when your backyard is filled with the likes of Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, Boston University, Tufts, and Northeastern.

She’s tried to set Bentley apart by focusing on how the school prepares its undergraduates for work, even partnering with companies to fine-tune the curriculum so students are taught skills employers are looking for.

Larson has been touting so-called hybrid education — or what Bentley likes to call “PreparedU,’’ which is the title of her recent book. It combines academics with internships and other experiential learning to better prepare students for the world of work. It’s a similar formula proselytized by her counterpart Joseph Aoun at Northeastern, with its co-op tradition.

“It’s not so much where you go to college, but how do you go to college,’’ Larson said.

Bentley enjoys a high rate of job placement for graduates — over 97 percent — at a time when families are focused on making sure they get a return on investment from their college educations. Bentley’s annual cost, including room and board, is more than $68,000.

While Larson has spent a lifetime preoccupied with how women can break the glass ceiling, the notion of launching a center to advance women didn’t gel until about halfway into her presidency.

It was PricewaterhouseCoopers — the accounting firm that employs more Bentley graduates than any other company — that sparked the idea when on a campus visit executives asked Larson if she had a personal priority as president.

Larson said she wanted to help women break through in the business world. To which an executive from PwC responded: “You have just named one of the corporate world’s single biggest problems: the retention of high-potential women.’’

That discussion, in the living room of the Bentley’s president’s house, led to the creation of the Center for Women and Business in 2011. PwC gave $1 million, while four alumni kicked in $3 million to get the initiative off the ground. Liberty Mutual provided an additional $1 million last year.

Among those alumni were Steve and Christine Manfredi, who gave $2 million. They were the ones who wanted to rename the center in Larson’s honor, to keep her connected to Bentley.

“It’s something I have thought about for a long time,’’ said Steve Manfredi, who is also chair of the Bentley board. “She’s always going to be out in the public arena. She is always going to be an advocate. It’s just a natural fit.’’

After decades of fighting the good fight, Larson feels that women are finally on the verge of being treated equally.

“This is the first time I have felt overwhelmingly positive about the pace of change,’’ she said. “I think the tipping point is upon us.’’

So what’s next for Larson?

Not politics, though she said she has twice been asked by prior governors to run as their lieutenant governor. “I said no. My focus has been policy, not politics,’’ said Larson, who is an unenrolled voter.

Instead, she’s staying in academia, but this time at Harvard.

Starting in the fall, she will be a “president-in-residence,’’ in a yearlong program at the Graduate School of Education and serving as an adviser and mentor to aspiring college presidents.

It’s not a seven-day-a-week gig, which is exactly what she was looking for.

“I see this as a personal decompression chamber,’’ Larson quipped.

Shirley Leung is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @leung.