Board of Trustees Meeting Opening Remarks by William E. Gundy
October 16, 2010
As I reflect on where we find ourselves in the fall of 2010, I am having difficulty believing that we ended our recession in June of 2009—as we have recently been told. We are looking at a landscape unlike any we have known, and an outlook suggesting an extended recovery. We don't have to look far to see how this impacts us. We see such real indicators as the declining average income of our applicant families, their increased difficulty in securing loans, and the reaction by a number of colleges who have started offering programs providing bachelor degrees in three years. Enrollment has also been stepping up in the world of community colleges as financial pinch draws more attention to that alternative.
On the other hand, consider the encouraging picture presented by a number of our key measures. Enrollment has achieved a doubling of applications and admits over the past several years, with resulting record enrollment, and we have successfully entered some new markets outside of our traditional markets. We have pulled in over $25 million in gifts over the past five years, and our box score for leadership giving at the Legend level, over a longer period of time, has made possible the facilities additions which include: Lethbridge Lodge; Danforth, Rooke, and Lawson residence halls; Kelsey Fields; Pierce Park; Ivey Science Center; Mercer Hall; and the Ware Campus Center; and most recently, the Windy Hill School. Our endowment performance has come close to recouping the 37 percent we lost in 2008-2009, and it is almost back to where we were in December 2007.
As we all know, however, this does not call for over-exuberance. Big firms are recovering faster than the overall economy as a result of serious cost reduction achieved by layoffs and closing of less profitable units. Our nation has achieved a new high-water mark for foreclosures this past September. Closer to home, Greg Matthews reminds us that increases in aid are absorbing the fee increases; and the competition for students requiring less aid is getting fierce. In addition he tells us that our yield rates have recently gone down, as families with less resource find it harder to choose Colby-Sawyer. Our endowment, although fundamentally strong and configured well for the long-term, has been on a roller coaster ride over the past couple of years, and the rates of growth we can expect in the near future may not match what we have known in the past. Our development needs are not easing up and meeting them in this climate presents a degree of difficulty beyond what we have faced in our recent past. This picture calls to mind some recent opening remarks by other trustees: Bill Helm's discussion a year ago about the glass half full or half empty, and Alice Brown's remarks of this past May and her grandest hope being the arrival of a gift larger than ever expected—like the Bill Cosby $20 million to Spelman College—to help us fulfill our dreams. Although we certainly will take that kind of gift any time, we can hardly plan on it. So what do we do?
To sustain, grow and survive, we must cultivate what I would call “flexible strength.” This is the trait articulated in one of the four themes of our Strategic Plan—Dynamic Devotion to Excellence. It emphasizes the importance of both flexibility and the capacity to adapt and change, together with the importance of financial strength. It means protecting what is our foundational core while evolving in response to new realities. It means managing the tension between change and “staying the course.”
I think we have identified our foundation as being:
Engaged Learning with a strong Liberal Arts base, close relationship between faculty, staff, and students, and integration of academics and student development.
Dynamic Devotion to Excellence through flexibility, financial strength, growth, becoming a destination college, and through strategic facilities implementation.
Our people and our focus—giving us clarity of direction.
Lethbridge Laws—balance the budget, grow the endowment, watch out for financial aid. I remember hearing these as part of our heritage in my first year here as a trustee, and they have proven to be worth paying attention to.
Now let's look at just a few of the ways we have demonstrated a readiness to change over the years. To begin with, we have changed our name eight times since our beginning in 1837. We have changed from a junior college for women to a four-year coed college. Within the more recent past we have added three new majors—health studies, sociology, and philosophy. We are changing our athletic conference membership to the North Atlantic Conference. Two of our Strategic Plan themes point to important changes already underway:
Linking to the World—emphasizing the importance of linking to the world, the value of diversity, connecting the Colby-Sawyer experience with the outside world and committing to make the world a better place. We have successfully launched our Progressive Scholars and Global Beginnings programs which respond directly to this theme. How about the rescue operation of the miners in Chile to link the entire world in support.
Living Sustainably—emphasizing the importance of understanding and minimizing our environmental impact, reducing our carbon footprint, and appreciating our sense of place. The creation of a Campus Climate Plan and the recently-negotiated electrical contracts are responsive to this—as is the Walking Our Talk program.
We made two recent changes in the structure and operating format of our Board of Trustees which have already proven to be beneficial—the addition of the Winton-Black Trustees, Sara Hammond and Erik Rocheford; and the changes to the structure of the board meetings to allocate more time for coming to grips with key issues and less for more routine update reporting. How about yesterday's lively discussion about “that building”?
So what does all this tell us? Among other things it says that our Strategic Plan captures the themes most important for our continued success and points to actions we should be taking. Here is a relevant excerpt from the recent “Trusteeship” publication which speaks to where we are:
“Four powerful forces are redefining board's responsibilities and changing attitudes about engagement: the economic crisis; new types of trustees who have changed the governance dynamic; increased scrutiny of the higher-education business model and student outcomes, and post-Sarbanes-Oxley regulation and audit/monitoring functions.”
As we wrestle with the tough challenges before us of: balancing enrollment, fees, and aid; improving our retention rate; evaluating and implementing alternative delivery systems; locating opportunities for cost reduction, ramping up our development capability, and yes, even how we allocate our money and balance the budget with depreciation covered, we are reminded that “it's a new ballgame.” As we dig deeper and challenge ourselves for better solutions, we will benefit from the stronger “data mining” brought to us by Ni Yi to help us better understand the interplay of key variables impacting our outcomes. This environment demands that we become still more engaged and more discriminating in how we spend our time, and it underscores the importance of our being even more vigilant in identifying potential new trustees who could best complement the tapestry of this talented team. Welcome, Susan Wright! I believe that Colby-Sawyer will succeed in holding firm to its real strengths while staying flexible to make changes needed to negotiate these bumpy waters. And remember...life is not about how to survive the storm but how to dance in the rain.
