The St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors (BVG) met in Santa Fe February 21–23, 2019, and, as has been our custom these last three years in the spirit of transparency, we are sharing with you our report on issues raised and discussed by the board.
The meeting’s overall focus was on the examination and improvement of student life at St. John’s. To be sure, the BVG continued its aggressive oversight of the college’s financial state, but finances were not the overarching narrative of this meeting. The student experience—in the classroom and out—drove the discussion.
During the Plenary session, BVG Chair Ron Fielding (A70) reminded us that these are perilous times for small liberal arts colleges. He cited a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, “America’s Disappearing Private Colleges,” which contained worrisome data about small college finances and predicted that an average of 15 small liberal arts colleges will close every year in the coming decade.
“There was a time when many people worried that St. John’s College would be one of those victims in the next ten years,” said Mr. Fielding. “But since that time, we’ve made often very painful decisions to change our course. Today in this meeting, you will hear mostly good news about those changes and their effects on enrollment, retention, and campaign progress.”
Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt echoed that sentiment, but cautioned against settling back into old patterns of collective unawareness. “We are at another inflection point today,” said President Roosevelt. “We need to really think about the student experience…The data are screaming at us. Sixty-six percent of alumni who were once a freshman at St. John’s—regardless of whether they graduated—have either never given to us nor attended a college event or haven’t done so in the past five years. We need to use this data to give voice to those who have chosen to remain silent…”
President Roosevelt urged the BVG and other college constituencies to examine the student experience with the same intense focus and common purpose that the board, faculty, and staff exhibited in addressing the state of the college’s financial affairs starting in 2016.
Annapolis President Panayiotis Kanelos is strongly supportive of this work to learn more about how to improve the student experience but “wishes to ensure that attention is paid to the distinctive nature of the St. John’s education, the fact that at another college you can change your major if you are uncomfortable. Here there is no changing your course of study.”
Santa Fe Dean Walter Sterling (A93) urged all college constituencies to listen to what he considers to be the college’s most underutilized resource when examining retention matters: students’ voices. “It’s because we’re friends and lovers of the college that we can’t be flatterers of the college,” said Dean Sterling.
What follows is our report on this and other discussions held by the BVG, including enrollment, student success, progress on the Freeing Minds campaign, and, of course, finances.
We don’t know yet what our final enrollment will be for the college-wide freshman class of 2023, but at this time applications and admitted students are up on both campuses. As of February 15, Annapolis has admitted 511 students and Santa Fe has admitted 215 students, which represents a 9 percent increase overall and a 25 percent increase in domestic admitted students compared to this time last year. This is good news, especially when many other private, liberal arts colleges are seeing a decline in their applicant pools. Additional good news is that the gender balance, academic profile, and diversity of admitted students are all improved. Notably, in Santa Fe, more women are applying than men for the first time in campus history.
We have a number of initiatives underway that we believe will help with enrollment during these challenging times. For example, spearheaded by President Kanelos, we are using a $2 million gift to the college to recruit more students from the United World Colleges (UWC), a system of 17 private high schools that teach the International Baccalaureate Diploma curriculum in 17 countries on four continents.
We have also utilized other generous donations to initiate a Southwest Scholars and Partners Program to strengthen our regional recruiting in New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Oklahoma. Considering how few private colleges exist in the American Southwest—and how few of these are truly first-rate—St. John’s Santa Fe is uniquely poised to seize this competitive advantage.
Participation in Summer Academy, St. John’s pre-college Great Books summer course for high school students, is a leading catalyst for enrollment as a freshman at the college. For the first time, we are offering a 50 percent discount to children of St. John’s alumni who wish to attend Summer Academy. For more information, please visit sjc.edu/summer-academy or email Santa Fe Summer Academy Director Liz Wilkinson at santafe.academy(at)sjc.edu or Annapolis Summer Academy Director Brittany Kemmer at annapolis.academy(at)sjc.edu.
Again led by President Kanelos, we are also implementing several new initiatives to enroll students in the Graduate Institute (GI). For example, this summer we will welcome our inaugural class of the Certificate in Liberal Arts Education, a two-semester program for educators. These teacher-oriented programs will increase enrollment in the GI and also aid us with student recruitment, as the certificate program will send more Program-educated teachers into schools who will, in turn, be eager to recommend St. John’s College to their own students.
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The BVG’s Visiting Committee is exploring the reasons why students leave St. John’s before graduating. Richard Groenendyke (SFGI08), chair of the Visiting Committee, presented the results of the committee’s interviews with 54 students who had voluntarily withdrawn, including 14 who had left and then come back. Through a series of questions posed by various committee members over the phone to these students, the survey revealed seven principal causes leading to student withdrawals. The foremost concerns are around relationships and support. Students who do not form close relationships early in their time at the college, especially mentoring relationships with tutors, and who do not feel supported by the campus community often struggle mightily with the rigorous academic demands.
It is important to note that Annapolis Dean Joe Macfarland (A87) and Santa Fe Dean Sterling have also initiated working committees of their own to explore these issues.
Mr. Groenendyke closed the meeting by stating that the principal causes would be further examined by the Visiting Committee in order to develop appropriate remedies. The committee will present these potential remedies at the June board meeting. “The leadership of the Visiting Committee really steered its work in a good direction by focusing on the student experience,” said Dean Macfarland. “This is a working committee that’s talking with students, talking with tutors and trying to learn as much as possible from our community.”
The Audit and Compliance Committee also heard a report on Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance that pertains to student success and flourishing. Both campuses are now requiring undergraduates to complete Get Inclusive, a Title IX training, before being allowed to register for classes. A mixture of in-person and online training has been offered on both campuses. In-person training was more popular, especially in Santa Fe. A further report on the implementation of the Campus Culture Committee’s recommendations and the associated activities of the Executive Directors of Campus Health and Wellness is expected at the June board meeting.
Since the last BVG meeting, we have raised an additional $16 million so that we now have $201 million in total commitments toward our Freeing Minds Campaign’s $300 million goal.
“I’ve said repeatedly that the first part of this campaign would be ‘easy’ in the sense that I could see where the money would come from,” said Warren Spector (A81), chair of the Advancement and Campaign Steering Committees. “The second half was going to be the hard slog. But I can now see much more easily how we will get to $300 million. And we will get there over the next 3–4 years.”
We are also extremely pleased to report that, as of this board meeting only halfway through our fiscal year, we have met our goal for this year’s Annual Fund: $2.8 million. Just one example of how the Fund has grown is that, for the first time, gifts made at the $5,000 and under tier have brought in over $1 million.
We are grateful to many in the St. John’s community for their vigorous support of the campaign, but as noted earlier in this report our giving percentage—currently under 20 percent of degreed alumni—still has a great deal of room to grow. As we continue to address issues that have caused some to hold back their support, we hope that many more alumni will re-engage with the college.
As we have said before, we will be asking you to give more often now that the campaign has gone live, so here we go again: Won’t you please Join In? And remember, anything you give will be matched dollar for dollar by the Winiarski Family Foundation Challenge Grant with a commensurate gift to the endowment, doubling your gift—and your impact—on St. John’s future.
A recurring theme throughout this board meeting was the question of how to maintain the momentum gained through the trifecta of the campaign launch and new financial model, the Winiarski Family Foundation Challenge, and the New York Times piece by Frank Bruni. These three unprecedented events will certainly not align again, but we can capitalize on their transformative power.
Since the last board meeting, we have been successful at continuing to earn the attention of the press. We have been on the cover of the Washington Post, on NPR’s On Point, in the LA Times, and in a number of other substantial publications.
Additionally, the college is developing advertisement campaigns that distinguish the strengths and unique voices of each campus. The college has been working to shift our visual identity in accordance with alumni preferences. The beginning stage of this work is evidenced in our capital campaign (and alumni were provided a preview in the recent annual report). We will fully implement our new identity on our website, social media channels, and marketing materials in summer 2019. In addition, we are running two digital ad campaigns on the internet: one for raising general awareness of the college and the other directly targeted at improving enrollment.
Traffic to our website has grown significantly since the summer, which we believe is the combined result of strategic search engine optimization, press attention, the campaign launch, advertising, stronger website content, and a robust direct mail and email program for prospective students, alumni, and friends. Below are year-over-year website traffic comparisons for the two consecutive time periods of June 4–January 31 (2018 versus 2019).
We will continue to use data to inform decision-making and communications and marketing investments. We’ve laid a good foundation with the capital campaign communications material; now, we must build upon that foundation and enter into the next chapters of both the campaign and admissions marketing messaging.
You will remember that three years ago, facing a structural deficit that had grown to $12 million on a $50 million budget, college management committed to achieving a balanced budget by 2021 and to meet deficit reduction goals along the way. We are pleased to report that we expect to come in under the $3.9 million deficit reduction goal for the current fiscal year, and that the proposed budget we presented to the BVG’s Finance Committee for FY19–20 meets the FY20 deficit reduction goal of $1.9 million.
We thank all who work at St. John’s for their commitment to meeting these critical objectives.
On the evening of Friday, February 22, 2019, one of the snowiest days of the year in Santa Fe, over 100 people gathered in Levan Hall to honor our longest serving board member and now Trustee Emeritus, Steve Feinberg.
Mr. Feinberg has served 43 years on the board. He has attended 170 meetings, missing perhaps 6 over four decades. He really has seen it all.
“My first meeting was in Santa Fe,” Mr. Feinberg recounted to the crowd. “President Weigle came in and told us there wasn’t enough money to pay the faculty for that week. I wondered what I had gotten myself into.”
Several of Mr. Feinberg’s colleagues on the board thanked him for his service and many acts of kindness, as well as tutors Peter Pesic and Cary Stickney. “Steve does the right thing time and time again,” said Mr. Stickney, “and that’s what Aristotle says makes a good man, a settled disposition to doing what is right. Not once-in-a-while doing what is right, not doing what’s right just because it’s expected, but choosing it, and choosing it for its own sake from a settled disposition. And I think that is a beautiful description of Steve.”
BVG Vice Chair Pamela Saunders-Albin (H15) presented Mr. Feinberg with an honorary lifetime membership to Summer Classics, one of his most cherished St. John’s programs, and BVG Chair Ron Fielding unveiled the plaque designating the Stephen Feinberg Seminar Room in the upper level of Levan Hall.
These are better days at St. John’s. We have made great progress on many fronts, most notably the capital campaign, visibility of the college and of our new financial model, improving campus culture, and increasing our applicant pool.
We still face important issues, led by the need to analyze how to improve the student experience so that more students will flourish.
Please know that we are deeply grateful for your continued interest in and support of the college.
If there are topics that you think we should be covering in the emails that follow board meetings, or you have specific suggestions on how this message could be more helpful, please send an email to presidents(at)sjc.edu. We would also welcome any comments you would like to offer about the student experience at St. John’s and how it might be improved. Please know that while we may not be able to respond to these comments individually, we value your feedback and will utilize it in our decision-making.
