Parents Council, Alumni Council and School Counselors
January 31, 2004 —Daniel F. Sullivan

• Welcome to you all
• I want to take just a few minutes to give you an update on what’s happening at St. Lawrence from the vantage point of the president, and then talk a bit about the strategic issues I see facing us in the next year or two. These are much on my mind just now as we prepare for our winter board meeting in a couple of weeks.
• First, the news:
• The people part of a selective residential liberal arts college are, of course, the center of it all, so let me start there, and the most important people are our students:
• You know, of course, that we selected our incoming class for this year from the largest applicant pool in our history. We are in a race to beat that result and are running, as of now, neck in neck. I’m hoping for a Seabisquit against War Admiral kind of finish, and I know Terry Cowdrey is too. The students we are recruiting today are not just stronger and stronger academically, they are also increasingly serious of purpose, they work harder on their core academic business, and they continue the St. Lawrence tradition of having student body that is active in everything to an extent greater than the institutions to which we compare ourselves. This we know from surveys like the HEDS senior survey, which allows us to compare our students with those at other selective residential colleges.
• Our students are also more and more diverse. We have finally, I believe, begun to crack what seemed like a diversity barrier for us. 11% of this year’s first-year class were American students of color. We hope to beat that percentage in the new class.
• Everyone in this room knows that the reason we are preoccupied with these things in admissions is that in this kind of residential college, students learn a great deal from each other—we call these “peer effects.” That is why it is just as important to worry about who our students will be learning from outside the classroom as it is to worry about who we hire to teach and coach students in the classroom and on the playing fields (and rinks, and courts, and tracks!).
• And, of course, we do worry about building and keeping an outstanding faculty. I can report here that, despite the economy and the tightness of our budget, we have been able nonetheless to make a small number of strategic additions to the faculty and to the technical staff that supports teaching and learning here. One is a second faculty position in biochemistry, as we continue to ramp up our science program in anticipation of new spaces and in response to growing student demand. I interview, as does Dean Cornwell, all candidates for tenure-track faculty positions. We are seeing absolutely outstanding candidates, and we find that we can, in almost all cases, hire the ones we want. We are also finally cracking what has been a diversity barrier there as well. Last year, five of the eleven tenure-track faculty hires were persons of color.
• We are continuing to be able to raise significant levels of operating and capital gifts in support of the university. Last year was our second year over $18 million in private gift support. We’re running behind that pace on the capital side this year, but with many significant gifts under discussion with donors, but ahead of last year’s pace for the annual fund. If we continue to do our work here, I’m confident that we can locate the badly needed resources necessary to keep our momentum going.
• While the recovery is far from complete, our endowment market value finished the end of calendar 2003 at $195 million, still below its $220 million high of several years ago, but way above its $159 million low in the very depth of the recession. Because our spending formula allows us 5.5% of a trailing 12-quarter average market value for the operating budget, endowment spending in support of our programs this year is significantly lower than last, and next year’s will be significantly lower than this. I’ll return to this issue in a moment.
• We have, as you know, continued to press forward with our aggressive program of facilities enhancement and renewal:
• The new student center opened two weeks ago—a dream here at St. Lawrence for over 15 years, it’s now in place. It was designed to become the center of the campus, it’s located at the very center of the campus, and it is becoming the very center of the campus. We couldn’t have asked for more. There is, of course, a punch list of things still incomplete, and the furniture isn’t all here, and for a while we couldn’t get Dean Petty’s office above 46 degrees, and, of course, as I guess the Hill News reports, some students lament the loss of spaces they got used to in the Edward John Noble Center . Change is hard, but it is also the very lifeblood of institutions that are vital and alive. I’m very pleased with it, and I hope you are too.
• The new senior townhouses have been a spectacular hit. Last weekend we dedicated north cluster of three townhouses in memory of Robin Steiner, a classmate of mine who died in 1993 from a rare blood disease, and whose daughter Betsy graduated last year and suggested to her family that they make the leadership gift to allow us to do the project.
• The Wachtmeister Field Laboratory is now complete. Built just across the Little River Bridge to support our Integrated Science Education Initiative, this facility puts a laboratory physically right next to all of the instruments and other monitoring and research activity our students and faculty do in and around our campus Little River tract. It was made possible by a gift from Ted and Karen Wachtmeister, parents of two Laurentians, and Karen is now a trustee.
• Planning for our $60 million project of new and renovated science and mathematics facilities, the first phase of which we will begin constructing in August, continues apace. The architects are moving into the construction drawing phase, and we are working night and day to raise the balance of the funding necessary to commit to the entire first phase—a $35.6 million project overall. So far we have located $32.5 million in funding, through a combination of gifts, a $10 million set-aside from our last tax-exempt borrowing, and several grants from the state of New York . The trustees have insisted, at our recommendation, that we raise $8 million in new endowment as part of the project as well, and so we have about $14 million yet to locate. We may be helped some by the new state capital plan the governor has proposed, which for the first time allows independent colleges to compete for state funding in the higher education capital plan.
• And very importantly, vacating the E. J. Noble Center allows us to begin to move forward on what will eventually be a project in excess of $10 million for enhancement of our spaces in the arts.
• Our capital budget for next year will also include a refurbishing of Whitman Hall, as part of our ongoing program of residential facilities improvements.
• There’s more, but those are the big parts. The construction and renovation I’ve just listed total $92.5 million. Our need for continued success in capital fund raising is high, and so I and others spend a great deal of time at it.
• So, that’s something of an update.
• Before I move on to say something about the strategic issues on our plate just now, I can’t resist sharing with you this little story I got over the e-mail yesterday from my good friend and trustee David Laird, a member of my Class of 1965 and president of the Minnesota Private College Council. I guess the theme is about “planning,” which is surely something all strong colleges do carefully and continuously:

 

It was October, 2003 and the Indians on a remote reservation asked their new Chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild.

Since he was a Chief in a modern society he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky he couldn't tell what the winter was going to be like.

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.

But being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold" the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared.

A week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find.

Two weeks later the Chief called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"

Absolutely," the man replied. "It's looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters ever."

"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy."

 

I hope our approach to planning at St. Lawrence has been more strategic, but very much like the chief in that story we are much preoccupied with resources.

 

• Strategic Issues, the things that keep me awake at night:
• How to keep moving forward, even in small ways, while the competition is forced to move backward; how to keep from moving backward in the face of a very complicated and difficult financial environment:
• Budget trimming, while continuing to keep salaries and people our top priority, for they deliver the rich and diverse academic and co-curricular program that is the very center of what we do. We have expanded programs and offerings greatly: are there things we have invested in that haven’t worked as well as we thought, and therefore could stop doing?
• How to stay affordable to a very diverse student body in economic background, while funding the programs they expect to find when they enroll.
• How to continue to change and adapt so that our students receive the education they will need to lead and contribute in a very complex and challenging 21 st century world.
• How, when almost no-one gets intercollegiate athletics right, to ensure that we get it right at St. Lawrence.
• How to increase diversity at St. Lawrence and have that diversity translate into a significantly improved education for all students.
• How to lead a university community that is truly inclusive, and which is a model for the kind of shared governance that characterizes truly excellent colleges and universities.
• How to maintain the morale and commitment of a university full of wonderful faculty and staff in the face of our challenges: we need to keep working and moving forward, but everyone has a limit—how to know what’s truly impossible as well as what is possible.
• Those are some of the things that keep me awake at night. Do you have any questions?