Trustees approve financial model

During last weekend’s Trustee meetings, many of the recommendations that President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz made in his Public Address on College Finances were discussed and endorsed.

The Board of Trustees agreed that each year, the comprehensive fee should only increase by one percentage point of the annual Consumer Price Index.

Before this point was accepted, the Student Comprehensive Fee Committee gave a presentation about their recommendation for next year’s fee at the opening meeting on Friday, according to David Donahue ’91, special assistant to the President. Additionally, the Faculty Council presented their reactions to Liebowitz’s financial recommendations, which were overall positive reactions.

According to Frederick Fritz ’68, the chair of the Trustees, there was a sense of relief among faculty that the College is at a point in which committing time, energy and resources to campus deficits is coming to an end.

“The financial situation was pretty all-consuming for many people over last 18 months,” Fritz said. “Now that decisions have been made, it’s time to look beyond and get back to more pleasant college endeavors and the business of education.”

The other points that Liebowitz made in his public address were well received by the trustees as well.

“President Liebowitz’ other recommendations were not subject to a vote,” Fritz said. “They were endorsed and we liked them a lot.”
However, according to Associate Professor of History Louisa Burnham, the Faculty Council expressed concern with the seventh recommendation in Liebowitz’s address, which states that the College should address “the absence of salary increases that accompany significant career achievements, starting with the earning of tenure and the promotion to full professor status.”

“We told the Board of Trustees that many faculty feel somewhat disheartened by recommendation number seven and fear that we will no longer be competitive in attracting and maintaining the best possible faculty,” Burnham said.

The Faculty Council also expressed concerns about the growing amount of busy work at a time when salaries are frozen, according to Burnham.

“By busy work, I mean tasks such as acting as crowd managers, conducting degree audits, doing committee work that could be done more efficiently, etc.,” Burnham explained. “It’s not about advising senior work or the course load.”

While the Faculty Council did not make specific proposals, it brought its concerns to the table for discussion. The Council expressed their opinions to the Trustees present at the discussion, who relayed the comments back to the entire board.

“These issues have been brought to attention by many faculty members,” Burnham said. “The best possible faculty needs to be able to continue to pursue research and writing agendas while also providing students with the excellent teaching and faculty-student interaction that Middlebury is famous for.”

Burnham said that the members of the Faculty Council were very glad that Liebowitz recommended no layoffs for staff and the maintenance of faculty and staff benefits at their present level. They also were happy about the continued commitment to need-blind financial aid.

Other committees brought up different issues at the Trustee meetings, such as merging with the Monterey Language Schools, increasing the use of bio-methane, and the investment of the college endowment in sustainable companies.

The discussion of joining the online language venture operations together was supported at the meetings. This operation will include the expansion of the Monterey summer language programs to four sites. The goal of this expansion is to generate more revenue for the College, according to Fritz.

The trustees also voted to merge with the Monterey Institute. Fritz hopes that this merger will facilitate faculty and student exchanges between Monterey and Middlebury. The merger will take place in June 2010.

The trustees also endorsed the proposal to move forward in using bio-methane as an alternative to biomass fuel, a new step in reaching the College’s 2016 carbon neutrality goal. To do this, the College is planning on building a pipeline for bio-methane with the support of grants.

The Investment Committee of the Trustees approved a portion of the College endowment to be managed into a sustainability fund. The idea to do this came about a few years ago, from a group of students who were members of the Sunday Night Group. The students formed the Socially Responsible Investing club, and requested that the College be more transparent about what is invested in Middlebury’s endowment portfolios. Now that this recommendation has been approved, students will be able to evaluate whether or not certain companies the College invests in live up to Middlebury’s sustainability standards, something they were able to do to a only minimally in previous years.

“We’ve had different ways of dealing with this in the past,” Fritz explained. “Students used to review companies that investment managers could provide them with. But now they have a larger and more robust opportunity to look at companies.”

Fritz believes that the trustee meetings were, overall, very successful.
“By our own records, this was one of the busiest and most productive trustee meetings in my memory,” Fritz said. “It was packed into two and a half days, and it dealt with a complex and full agenda.”