Trustees dig into new agenda

Author: Derek Schlickeisen

The College's Board of Trustees met this past weekend to implement priorities adopted in last spring's Strategic Plan, including a capital campaign to support added faculty members and financial aid and the construction of a low-emissions power plant on campus. The annual retreat also included a ceremony on Saturday dedicating the Axinn '51 Center for Literary and Cultural Studies now under construction at Starr Library.

In private meetings, the trustees focused their attention in part on a capital campaign to reduce the College's student-faculty ratio to 8:1. With each added professorship requiring $2.5 million in endowment to support, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said he and the trustees will now work to add about $80 million to the College's $830 million endowment to support the new faculty and other spending priorities. Despite the endowment's third straight year of strong market performance, the added faculty commitments pose a challenge that must be met by fundraising. "My job is basically set for the next five to six years," said Liebowitz.

The College's decision last spring to increase financial aid grants adds to this financial burden: as resources permit, the Student Financial Services Office hopes to replace between $500 and $2,500 per year in student loans with direct grants in order to reduce the debt held by graduates. "Having greater debt influences one's decision whether to come to Middlebury or go to a school that offers packages with less debt," said Liebowitz. "It also influences what types of jobs and careers students choose after graduation. We don't want that to happen because students should be pursuing their passions."

The Board also voted to go ahead with the construction of an $11 million biofuels facility that will reduce the College's carbon dioxide output to below 1990 levels by 2012. The facility, slated for completion in 2008, will use woodchips as its primary fuel source. Said Liebowitz, "We see this as a natural continuation on something the trustees have been involved with for the last two years, which is a commitment to a carbon reduction initiative."

With the faculty, financial aid and environmental goals taking priority, a third goal identified in the spring Strategic Plan - the completion of new housing for Cook, Wonnacott and Brainerd Commons - will have to wait. While plans do not call for completion of the new residence halls until 2015, both Liebowitz and Student Government Association President Alex Stanton '07 emphasized that work on integrating the Commons into social life at the College is ongoing. Stanton said he and others in student government met with the trustees on Friday to stress the importance of student input in the process. "We discussed the evolving role of the Commons at Middlebury and presented our agendas to the trustees," he said.

Board members and Liebowitz spent part of Saturday afternoon at a ceremony dedicating one of the College's current construction priorities, the Axinn '51 Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Starr Library, to Donald Everett Axinn in recognition of his support of the new facility. Axinn, a successful businessman and recipient of an honorary Doctor of Letters from the College in 1989, funded most of the renovation work.

In addition to the capital campaign, the trustees spent much of the weekend developing specific steps toward implementing the 82 individual recommendations in the Strategic Plan. John Emerson, secretary of the College and dean of planning, said that Old Chapel would try to ensure that every item receives due attention by assigning ultimate responsibility for each recommendation to a different individual on Liebowitz's senior staff.

"We promised in the plan to hold ourselves accountable to the community for [the Strategic plan's] implementation," said Emerson. "This means that we will provide regular progress reports, perhaps two or three times during each year." Of the 82 recommendations, two have already been implemented - the adoption of a new mission statement and the development of an academic ratings system for applicants to the College.

In describing the ratings system, the Strategic Plan calls for the Admissions Office to take into account "more than standardized test scores - for example, rigor of the high school curriculum, unique intellectual intensity and talent, and willingness to engage in intellectual discourse going beyond that expected by one's coursework."

Following the annual fall retreat for the College's Board of Trustees, the College will host trustees from the recently-affiliated Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) in their annual meeting on Oct. 24. Nine months into the affiliation with MIIS, Liebowitz remained optimistic that the move has strengthened the College's reputation for languages and international studies.

"I don't think the world looks all that much at what most liberal arts colleges are doing," he said. "But in the area of languages and international studies, many are interested in what Middlebury is doing."