President projects stable financial future

In Wednesday’s State of the College address, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz projected cheerful confidence as he outlined the College’s current financial situation in light of the recent economic crisis and discussed plans for the future.

Liebowitz noted that in the two years since the crisis began, the College has made “significant and truly remarkable progress” toward reconciling “our ambitious institutional aspirations with our reduced financial capacity.”

“Our community held together and weathered what many believe will be the worst of this particular storm,” he said, calling it “a remarkable team effort.”

This tone marks a pronounced departure from the more somber note Liebowitz struck in his last campus-wide address on Feb. 12, in which he listed the many financial sacrifices the College had made and would continue to make in order to adjust to an assortment of economic woes. These changes included an endowment — the College’s second most important source of revenue, behind tuition — that shrunk from $962 million in its pre-recession height to a low of $649 million.



Since that low, however, the endowment has grown this year to $815 million, one of many achievements Liebowitz listed in his remarks today. A budgetary surplus this past fiscal year, which ended on June 30, has been directed toward paying for the early retirement and voluntary separation program, which has proved highly successful in allowing the administration to completely avoid staff layoffs. Furthermore, the College projects a balanced budget for the next five years, reflecting the new, more conservative financial model Liebowitz outlined in his February address — a measure achieved through a combination of increased student enrollment; an ambitious fundraising program; and overall discipline across campus departments as they adapt to performing the same functions with reduced resources.

“The changes we have instituted have created stress, anxiety and work overload for many staff,” said Liebowitz, “and the impact has not been distributed equally among College employees.”

In addition to these milestones, the College has preserved what Liebowitz referred to as its four top priorities: avoiding staff layoffs; protecting the academic program, through retention of the current student-faculty ratio of 9:1 and continued faculty recruitment; retaining need-blind admissions for U.S. students; and preserving the faculty and staff benefits package.

“Few peer institutions can make the same claims as these,” Liebowitz said.

Liebowitz extended a special thanks to Facilities Services Director Norm Cushman, Dining Services Director Matthew Biette and Business Services Director Tom Corbin, all of whom have maintained the quality of their services with reduced staff and other resources. He drew particular attention to the campus meal plan under Biette, which he referred to as “the apple of our students’ eye, no pun intended.”

Liebowitz pointed to the extremely important role played by the Staff Resources Committee (SRC), chaired by Vice President for Administration Tim Spears. The SRC is currently grappling with how to consolidate staff positions and more efficiently distribute tasks across campus departments. In tandem with the Wage and Salary Committee, the SRC is also currently examining how to allocate the staff salary pool in order to more equitably administer staff raises.

“The SRC can begin to allocate and re-allocate staffing resources to help departments best complete their most important tasks,” Liebowitz said. “[Their] work is a labor- and communications-intensive process, because so much of what many departments do on campus has an impact elsewhere.”

Liebowitz strongly emphasized the importance of inter-staff communication, between staff departments and the SRC as well as top-down communication between senior administration and staff members.

“I, along with SRC members and all of our managers, need to give extra thought and attention to how we communicate around issues involving … changes in departments’ responsibilities,” he said. “We have made too little progress in this particular area.”

The process will be lengthy and difficult — a “give-and-take.” Sometime within the next two to three weeks, the SRC and the vice presidents will discuss this process.

“It is clear that providing just a brief explanation for decisions taken by senior administration will go a long way toward building more trust and confidence among the staff in general, and among those most influenced by the decisions in particular,” Liebowitz said. “I pledge to make this a priority of mine this coming year … I can’t guarantee that everyone will agree with all of our decisions, but I am determined to make sure that those decisions are at least understood.”

Liebowitz encouraged all members of the audience to voice any questions they might have, and he expressed pride in the level of transparency Old Chapel has already achieved in sharing financial information with members of the College community. He then went on to enumerate other institutional changes that have or will enhance the College’s highest aspirations.

Near the close of his remarks, he pointed to the recent appointment of Shirley Collado as Chief Diversity Officer as a sign that institutional diversity is being taken seriously. The reaccredidation self-study, spearheaded by Dean of Planning and Assessment Susan Campbell and under the auspices of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, is well underway, as will be a series of external departmental reviews conducted by small groups of faculty members from peer institutions who will submit recommendations for how academic departments might develop and improve.

In his final point, Liebowitz noted how even in the midst of severe budget cuts this past academic year, the College conducted faculty searches for all 11 positions, instead of freezing faculty hiring as might have been expected.

Though this action might “appear contradictory to the goal of exercising restraint,” Liebowitz said, “to have delayed or canceled the searches would have compromised our commitment to classes of a certain size for our students, reduced the level of engagement between students and faculty that is the foundation of a Middlebury education, and missed out on one of the best markets for faculty talent in decades, as so many other colleges and universities decided to cancel their searches and freeze their faculty positions.”

Overall, Liebowitz’s message in his short remarks, which lasted no longer than 20 minutes, was that the College’s earnest focus on high-quality academics remains intact in spite of immense, continuing institutional challenges.

“Though we can’t quite declare victory and ignore completely the economy and its impact on what we do and how we do it,” Liebowitz said, “I’m determined to refocus the College’s agenda toward what we care about most and do best: the education of our students.”