President Nirschel Shares University's Success with 300 College and University Business Officers

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Before I became president of Roger Williams University I served as vice president for institutional advancement at the University of Miami.�

As you know, institutional advancement is a fancy name for development � which used to be called fundraising.� Once people figured out what fundraising was, we changed the name to development, and once they figured out what development was, it was changed to institutional advancement.�

As vice president for institutional advancement I often worked closely with our chief financial officer.� I would raise money � but he would say we couldn�t count it because it didn�t provide budget relief � so our end-of-the-year charts never matched.

��������� But that tension was healthy from a governance point of view, and I�ll address that in more detail later on.

You also know that colleges and universities are going through a period of profound change and uncertainty.� This happens either every generation or all the time, depending on your perspective.

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In the 1960s, the late Clark Kerr, former Chancellor of Berkeley and the University of California system predicted the advent of the mega-university and the demise of the smaller, liberal arts colleges.�

It didn�t happen.��

Then, in the early 80s, George Keller wrote that 25% of all private colleges would disappear during the 1990s.�

It didn�t happen.

And today, colleges and universities, in both the private and public sectors, are facing what some see as threats, but what I see as challenges:�

�������� a dramatically changing demographic

�������� increased regulatory oversight and consumer scrutiny

�������� higher � and sometimes unrealistic--expectations

�������� and, as Thomas Friedman reminds us in his book, a flatter world, where we need to think both globally and locally.

And in responding to those threats, many colleges and universities have re-engineered themselves.

NYU, is now giving Columbia a run for its money.� Hofstra, once a Long Island commuter school, has advanced to another level.

Quinnipiac emerged from being a college Connecticut to a university with stature in Southern New England.�

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But not all schools have adjusted so well: Some universities, once on the rise, have faltered, and many more are barely running in place, tweaking at the margins.

What differentiates the growing institutions from those that are lagging behind is leadership.

For example, leadership that is merely personal (we can all think of places where the notion of l�etat c�est mois is the operative phrase) is no match for positive leadership� The kind that promotes strategic planning and engages the entire campus community to build on common, shared values.

Let me tell you a little about our university, not because it is interesting (actually it is) but because we have been engaged in a dramatic re-engineering of our institution on several levels.

Hopefully you can gain some insights from our experience and perhaps even share your own.

��������� Roger Williams was founded as RI�s first junior college in 1956.� Designed to address the needs of Providence, RI, businessmen, the basement of the city YMCA, school halls and office buildings constituted the �campus� until, in the late 1960s, visionaries moved the school to then-rural Bristol and began the process of creating Roger Williams College.� During subsequent decades the college grew and became a university in 1992, and soon after created Rhode Island�s only law school in 1994.�

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When I became president in September of 2001, enrollment included 2,500 undergraduates, a handful of part-time graduate students and 330 students at the school of law.� I looked closely before accepting the position.� The campus was on 150 beautiful waterfront acres.���

The range of academic offerings was very enticing

�������� business

�������� law

�������� philosophy

�������� architecture

�������� marine science, and so much more.

There were students, construction�both new and old�and a bucolic setting.� �But there were perils as well � kind of like a Potemkin village.� The university was blessed � not with one, not two or three, but FOUR unions, including a unionized faculty.�

The faculty-administration relationship was rancorous.� The contract was an NEA contract, the same union that represents public elementary school teachers.� The board of trustees was small and local.� The board�s dynamic chairman was deeply involved in strategic as well as operational issues. �And, the finances, while far from desperate, merited a particularly close look.�

�������� A heavy debt load

�������� an exhausted line of credit

�������� a $3 million operating deficit

�������� and total annual fundraising of less than $1 million.

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As I probed more deeply, one of the highlights of the operation was the admissions staff and its leadership.� They managed to recruit enough students to balance the budget while maintaining a respectable tuition discount rate.� The problem however was that they accepted more than 90% of the applicants. While fewer than 2/3 of the freshman stayed for their sophomore year.� The university�s graduation rate was 34% and the moniker for RWU in some circles was Rich White Underachiever.

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So, I accepted the position.

When I came to campus, I set to work addressing these issues by starting a conversation with everyone who would participate � faculty, staff, students, trustees, the community, other educators and alumni to discover their sense of the university. I believe good leaders listen � bring their own experience to bear � review data � use intuition, then act.�� At my first student forum hundreds of students attended and told me that they:

�������� liked the faculty (but there weren�t enough of them)

�������� the campus wasn�t especially diverse

�������� the dorms were in poor shape

�������� the recreation center was small and ancient

�������� there wasn�t enough parking

�������� the Internet was more often down than up

�������� and the food was lousy.�

I tested their complaints and bit into a veggie burger � they were right.

��������� During the forum, since I was new, I often turned to my then-senior colleagues and asked them to respond to the students� questions.� They couldn�t.�

Similarly the faculty was embittered, they loved the university and the students but the union contract gave them little role in important issues on campus, even academic matters.� At the same time, no one had ever been denied promotion or tenure and some of the faculty wanted to keep it that way. Yet, when I asked one kindly veteran faculty member what I could do, he said:

�Give us a greater purpose, give us direction, give us some fabric.�

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So, I launch the first-ever participatory strategic planning process in the history of the university. There had been plans before � beautiful multivolume plans consisting of wish lists that sat on shelves collecting dust.�� This was to be different.

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First, in conversations with the campus community I identified seven key areas of concern:

�������� enrollment

�������� retention

�������� faculty and academic development

�������� technology

�������� campus planning

�������� diversity

�������� budgeting systems and operations.�

All cried out for attention.

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I assigned each of my seven direct reports to chair a committee � but not of their own choosing.� For example,

�������� The academic vice president was made chair of budgeting, systems and operations

�������� the vice president for enrollment headed the committee for faculty and academic development.

Then I invited 25% of the people who worked at the university � more than 125 � to serve as members of task forces � to further cross-pollinate people and ideas.�

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For example, one team might include an accounting professor, a law school professor might serve, as well as the assistant registrar, the head of housing, the development director and the basketball coach.��

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Step one:� Knock down the silos and foster the creative tension any institution needs to reinvigorate itself.

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I talked with them about SWOT analyses.� And benchmarking.�� And then, asserting my leadership for the institution, I attended the opening meeting of each group to discuss my values and what I saw Roger Williams University as � a liberal arts university.�

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A university that celebrates important values embraced by all the best liberal arts colleges and universities:

�������� A love of learning for its own sake

�������� Preparation for careers and graduate education

�������� Collaboration of faculty and students in research

�������� Community Service

�������� An appreciation of global perspectives

�������� A commitment to reason and respect for every individual.

These values became our mantra.

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The teams worked diligently for three months � on a fast track.� They did the SWOT, benchmarked, met for meetings, coffee, drinks.� At the conclusion a scribe took their ideas and recommendations, crafting them into a planning document.� I reviewed the document and, for each category made a personal and professional commitment.

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1.���� Any growth in enrollment would be accompanied by a growth in resources�especially in the hiring of new faculty.

2.���� We would increase the global and diverse nature of our faculty.

3.���� We would improve retention 1% each year.

4.���� We would have budget surpluses not deficits and grow the endowment.

5.���� We would commit ourselves in a tangible way to being a campus that maintains civility, reason and respect.

6.���� Budgeting and resources would be tied to planning efforts that reflect the core values.

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So fast forward:
Today we have a vibrant faculty senate engaged in campus life.� We still have a faculty union, but, for the first time peers are reviewing peers and a system of rewards and consequences have seen us outplace faculty, sometimes deny tenure and promotion, incorporate a system of merit compensation�while also reducing teaching loads by 13%.� Of the 202 full-time faculty at RWU � 60 have been hired during my five years here.

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Today, the endowment stands at $84 million up from $37 million 4 � years ago.� Deficits are out, surpluses are in, our bond rating is up.

In terms of Enrollment: The goal was not to get bigger but to get better, and we managed to do both.�

Since 2001 we have had

�������� a 100% increase in applications

�������� a 50% increase in enrollment and

�������� more importantly an 18% improvement in acceptance rate.�

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We have also enjoyed a more than 50% improvement in our graduation rate over the past four years. We now have a campus master plan � a five-year capital-expenditure plan and an analysis of deferred maintenance. The campus master plan has led to the establishment of a university zone � approved by the town of Bristol which will allow us to more quickly and easily construct on-campus projects.

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��������� And, in terms of capital projects and construction

�������� in the last 4 years we have built new housing

�������� added 2 dozen high-tech classrooms

�������� renovated and expanded the schools of architecture and business

�������� enhanced the library

�������� and built a new campus recreation center � totaling more than $50 million in projects.�

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Over the next four years we have at least that amount of new construction approved and/or underway � funded through refinanced debt, surpluses or philanthropy.

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On a practical level, I remind the Deans that if their ideas (no matter how noble) do not fit into our core values and mission, the odds of funding are in the none to none category.�

We also have reinvented the public profile of the university.�

NO longer the best-kept secret in Rhode Island, Roger Williams is recognized throughout New England as engaged in learning to bridge the world. We were the first university to offer scholarships to women from post-Taliban Afghanistan.� We welcomed, along with Harvard, the first official Iraqi student delegation in 35 years. And, last January, we opened the first American university in Vietnam.��

While we still have a long way to go in terms of diversity � today more than 16% of our faculty are people of color or international.�

That�s up from 5% when I arrived.� And similarly over 10% of the student body is diverse � with the strategic plan seeking to increase that by 50% over the next several years.

We try to live the core values articulated at the new and improved RWU.� Later this month we�ll purchase passports for every sophomore with a 3.0 GPA to symbolically emphasize the importance of study abroad and the consuls general of several foreign nations are attending the event as well.

Last year nearly 30% of our juniors went abroad to more than 30 locations.� We also created a commission on civil discourse and a journal: Reason and Respect to bring important topics and speakers to campus including the author Salman Rushdie, political commentator David Gergen and next month we�ll host former Northern Ireland First Minister and Nobel Prize Winner David Trimble.

Roger Williams has a Center for Macro Projects and Diplomacy that links architecture, engineering and international relations in creative problem solving.� That�s some of the programmatic dimension to developing a top-drawer institution. �But cultivating the human component of an organization is equally important.

After all, Universities are the most human of enterprises. The key to keeping them healthy, beyond watching the numbers, putting up buildings and counting your change, is to engage people and celebrate both their individual accomplishments and that of the university as a whole.

Some of the ways we did that was to start an unsung leader award to acknowledge those quiet and important individuals not in the limelight:

�������� Such as Eddie, the veteran facilities worker who helped build the university � literally and figuratively�and who knows every nail and 2X4 on campus

�������� Or Steve who flips burgers and offers a smile at the law school snack bar

�������� Or Kate in Public Safety

We are creating prizes for the �Bright Idea� a suggestion program on campus started by our ombudsman to generate savings and, more importantly, involve the campus community.�

And on the 50^th anniversary kickoff over 700 faculty, past and present, staff, students and alumni gathered to celebrate without distinction as to rank or title.

��������� I�m telling you this, not to blow our horn, that�s not what you came to hear, but rather to show how we delivered on our commitment to re-engineer our institution.� We succeeded by starting from a set of core principles.� �We then engaged a wide range of people in a planning process � and while the plan, as Eisenhower said was nothing, planning is everything.� And this approach to strategic planning and thinking continues to permeate the organization at every level because it has won a lot of buy-in all across campus.�

Just an important, we are evolving a code of conduct and civility in how we act as a community.� We treat each individual with respect and dignity.� We attempt�as best we can�to adhere to the highest ethical principles we can in every aspect of the university�s management.

In recent years we have heard too often of scandals or mismanagement in higher education.� I wrote an article on the subject for the web journal Inside Higher Education entitled Pay, Perks, Performance.� Without distilling the entire article here I reminded the readers that leaders in higher education � and you are all leaders � are not there by divine right.� And, while many of our board members are successful in business, a university may resemble a business, but still it is NOT a business.

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We don�t have shareholders, we have stakeholders.�

We don�t make widgets or cars, we produce something greater�we shape our society�s future.� And we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct.� Not because of Sarbanes Oxley � a version of which is probably heading our way � but because we are educators�even those of you in accounting or finance are involved in the educational mission of the institution you serve.

Hence, you are doubly obligated to conduct your business with impeccable ethics: not just because it is professionally required, or the right thing to do, but because the welfare of so many young people is at stake.

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Thank you.