President’s Community College Fall Address,
September, 10, 2014
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our annual College Community
Address. We meant to do this a few weeks ago in Heckman with a picnic in Cassel
Theatre afterwards, but to allow more time to finish work on the learning
commons, we decided to delay. Next year we will be back to our normal schedule
in late August.
This address is intended to officially kick off the beginning of our academic year.
But it is also a time for us to take a break from our many activities, so I can
share with you what’s happening on campus –and do so in context of our past, our
present, and our future.
So let’s begin with our vision. Aspirational in nature, our vision reflects our
hopes and dreams for the ideal future of this college. Our vision aspires to put
Doane College on the national and stage, where we will be recognized by both our
peers and aspirants, for academic excellence, student engagement and innovation.
Our vision seeks to enroll a diverse student body that draws students not only from
Nebraska, but from across the country and around the world.
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Our vision imagines a campus environment that is not only welcoming and
supportive to all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or nationality—but
challenging academically, to the very brightest of minds.
Our vision seeks to expand access to higher education and increase affordability to
both our traditional residential students here in Crete, and to our non-traditional
adult learners in Grand Island, Lincoln and Omaha.
Whereas our Vision provides inspiration and defines what we want to achieve in
the years ahead; our Mission defines our purpose and answers the question, ‘why
does our college exists’.
143 years ago, our founding President, David Brainerd Perry, said our mission
as a college—our job as faculty—was to “bring latent talents to light and obscure
genius to distinction”. What a great mission statement! This clarion call to action
remains our raison d'être.
We need to listen to the poet Langston Hughes, who said “hold fast to our
dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly”. Doane
College was meant to take flight, to soar like an Eagle. And so we will. And so
we will.
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Make no mistake; this will not be an easy journey. It will be challenging. And
it will require leadership from us all. Mark Twain was right when he said
“challenges make life interesting, however overcoming them is what makes life
meaningful”
As we pursue our ambitious goals there will be set backs and disappointments as
well as progress and celebration, because after all, they are two sides of the same
coin. And over these past few years we have experienced both. This is to be
expected when you embark on any great journey or adventure.
The good news is that we have a road map to get us there.
We have our
strategic plan. Our plan is comprised of five clear strategic priorities that guide
our work and ensure that across campus we are working towards the same end.
These goals include:
Promoting Learning through Engagement
Expanding Resources through Enrollment Growth
Communicating Doane’s Distinctive Identity
Creating an Exceptional Educational Environment
Establishing a Supportive and Inclusive Community
However it is import to stress that the strategic plan is not written in stone. And
despite this man’s striking similarity to me in appearance, I did not deliver our plan
on a stone tablet. Rather it was written by all of us—for all us. It’s a dynamic
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document that can and should be adjusted over time to respond to current situations
and realities.
We are a
tuition dependent school, and in our case the projected tuition revenue for the
coming year is below what we consider necessary to make the degree of progress
we would like on all of our goals.
We are developing strategies and taking actions that in time will improve our
financial performance –but in the meantime we should make adjustments where we
can to ensure we continue to fund our highest priorities. That is the smart thing to
do.
But we should never abandon our vision and commitment to ultimately achieve all
our strategic goals and accomplish great things that are in store for our students
and for this college.
We owe our determination and resolve to those who came before us, and those
who are currently with us and more importantly, to all those who will follow us
when our time at Doane has passed.
There is an old Native American proverb that says “we do not inherit the earth
from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” The same can be said for
colleges, like ours, whose roots grow deep.
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Now let’s take a look at some of the highlights and accomplishments of this past
year. It’s impressive what all of you have accomplished.
POWER POINT SLIDES
And now, I’d like to take a moment and provide you with some additional thoughts
on some things I think matter most. Let’s begin with Enrollment.
The School of Arts and Sciences total (FTE) enrollment is 1060 this fall. Firstyear student enrollment is 268 while transfer enrollment is 38 plus an additional 6
international student ambassadors from China bringing total new-student
enrollment to 312. It’s a good class of really great students, but its down in
numbers from our high two years ago.
Similarly our enrollments are down in the School of Graduate and Professional
Studies, both in Lincoln
and Grand Island
. Omaha is still in its infancy, but
it too is below where we need it to be. Fewer students mean fewer financial
resources to fuel our plans. It makes for a challenging operating year, with some
sacrifice, but one we can and will manage. Churchill said when things are tough
the best thing to do is too keep moving. That’s Good advice.
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The enrollment declines we’ve experienced recently in Crete and in Lincoln and
Grand Island are not permanent. They are reversible with the actions we taking
and the investments we are making. But big ships do not turn in new directions
quickly, it takes some time.
What we are experiencing is what we call in sailor’s terms, a trough. Three years
ago, in my first year here, we had a first year class of 337, a record year for
enrollment, that I would call using my sailor’s lingo, a crest.
When I look at the enrollment pattern for Doane College over the past few decades
I see a sea-state of repeating troughs and crests in an inland sea called Nebraska.
What’s different now under our vision and plan, and what is important for all of
you to understand, is that our goal is to not just find another wave crest to ride for
awhile, but to find a different sea to sail in.
A sea that is far richer in technology and learning, more abundant in international
and out-of-state students, more diverse in race, ethnicity and culture, and more
challenging intellectually and academically and more engaging in impact to
community.
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Sure our immediate goal for the coming year is to increase the number of students
we enroll both in Crete and our branch campuses. But it is just as important, if not
more, that we do it in a way that is as Mark Twain said, “meaningful” and achieves
the expectations I just described.
And that my friends and colleagues requires that we have the patience, courage and
determination to sail beyond our inland sea and into uncharted waters. That is
what founders Thomas Doane and President Perry were doing on this prairie in
1872 when they arrived here from New England and this is what we are going to
do in this 21st Century.
In 2012 we created a strategic plan. And we have accomplished much since
then. But I think this fall semester is a good time to step back and re-examine our
strategic plan. And use this time to weigh the priorities of the initiatives yet to
come and define the human and financial resources that we will need to continue.
And in this spirit I have asked John Burney and Kim Jacobs to lead our community
in this effort, paying particular attention to the importance of:
Strengthening core mission and values
Responding quickly to needs of the marketplace
Identifying new sources of funding through growth, revenue diversification,
and/or the reallocation of resources where appropriate
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Reducing the college’s tuition dependence to support operations
Prioritizing support for our most important resource, each of you, our
faculty and our staff
With respect to fund-raising, over the past several months, Kevin Meyer and his
advancement team have been hard at work developing plans for raising funds to
support the needs of our college. He has been assisted in this effort by an outside
consultant, called the Steier Group out of Omaha
I will leave it to Kevin in the days ahead to fully describe the fund-raising strategy
but for now I think it fair to say that we will be pivoting from an emphasis that has
historically been focused on physical planning and funding for buildings and
infrastructure to a different approach that places a greater emphasis on raising
funds in direct support of programs and the needs of faculty and students.
This of course does not replace the need or the desire to raise funds for facilities
where there is a critical and well documented need, such as is the case for a new
theatre building as well as expanded space in support of band and choir. But this
time around we want to make sure that people and programs are prominent in our
fund-raising goals.
In regards to our effort to expand international education our goal is not only to
prioritize work in this area, but to weave it into the very fabric of our institutional
identity.
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Towards this end, we have engaged a consultant to assist us this fall in creating a
Strategic Plan for Internationalization and Global Engagement.
This ‘Plan’ when complete will have several goals and objectives, one of which
will be to create strategic partnerships with colleges and universities in different
parts of the world.
We made notable progress this summer in this regard by signing agreements
with the Agricultural University of Hebei in China that commits our two
institutions to developing joint programs.
We are just beginning to tap our potential to attract and retain international
students. The arrival this fall semester of six Chinese students, shown here in this
photo, is cause to celebrate, but it is only possible because of all your hard work.
I want to thank all the faculty and staff who have been working tirelessly behind
the scenes to prepare for their arrival and thank you for your continued support of
these students. I am most grateful for all you are doing.
During my visit to China in June I had the opportunity to share Doane’s story
with a lecture hall full of Chinese students, faculty and staff. Afterwards several of
the students and faculty came up to have their photo taken with me.
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But what was most special was when this young lady came up to me and asked
with a hopeful expression if I thought she would ever be able to come to America
and attend Doane College. I said of course it is. And here was her expression!
And here is proof that that a picture is worth a thousand words.
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In addition to exploring opportunities in China we are also exploring real
possibilities in Panama. I recently discovered on a drive one day that Panama is
easier to get to than China from Crete.
Apparently one only needs to take
HWY 33 out of town, turn right on road 142 and in just a short while you come
across the intersection of the road to Panama.
Head south and continue on that road until you reach Panama City. It is a bit of a
drive to be sure, pack some extra clothes, but as you can see from the photos
I
took during my visit to the country, the destination is well worth it for our staff,
faculty and students! We have a students and faculty heading down there later this
year. These are exciting times for Doane.
Our ultimate goal is to develop a plan for Global Connections that is sustainable
from a financial perspective and intellectually and culturally strong from an
academic perspective. A good plan . . . .
should include such things as partnerships and consortiums with foreign
institutions,
should have clearly defined goals to increase the number of international
students on campus
should recruit from a variety of countries around the
world
should create opportunities for faculty exchanges, and expand destinations
for student study abroad
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and last but not least, include the possibility for Doane to have its own
overseas campus one day.
And now I close with a few thoughts on the enduring importance of our goal
to increase Diversity.
In order to prepare our students for leadership in an interdependent and
interconnected world, they need to have opportunity to study and live on campus
with other students who are quite different from themselves.
My
freshman roommate in college was a fellow named Bobby Washington. He was an
African American from a housing project called Cabrini–Green on Chicago’s near
north side. Like Mohammed Ali at the time, Bobby had joined the Black Muslims
and he kept a large poster of Malcom X above his bed.
He was a gifted tailor who made beautiful clothes from scratch and kept his sewing
machine and colorful swaths of fabrics on a large table in our dorm room. He
listened to Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis and Sly and the Family Stone. Bobby and I
couldn’t be more different in our upbringing and world view.
But there we were that first day, staring at each other from each side of our room,
trying to figure each other out. We came to not only like each other, but to
understand each other. My education in college did not begin in the classroom, it
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began in my dorm room, meeting Bobby Washington—and coming to see that we
are all just ‘everyday people’.
Do you remember the song?
“There is a yellow one
That won't accept the black one
That won't accept the red one
That won't accept the white one
Different strokes
For different folks
And so on and so on
And scoo be doo be do
Oh sha sha
I am everyday people yeah yeah”
You see, simply having a diverse student body on campus is not enough. This is
why colleges whose diversity goals are only set on quotas and numbers fail. That’s
why we continue to work on being more welcoming and inclusive.
Successful diversity goals must go beyond the profile of the student body to
include the profile of the faculty, staff and administration. If it is a goal at Doane
College to increase diversity in the student body, and it is, then we should have a
similar goal to reflect this same diversity in our faculty and staff—and eventually
bring in the leadership to help develop a plan and make it all happen.
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Our budget shortfall may have prevented us momentarily from hiring a Vice
President for Equity, Access and Diversity, but it has not dampened our
enthusiasm nor diminished our need to do so. We shall eventually achieve this
goal. I say it remains for us an academic, economic and cultural imperative. Ah
but Sly said it so much better didn’t he—when he wrote those lyrics. .. “WE GOT
TO GET TOGETHER”
And That’s All Folks
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