By Jeffrey Riester, '70
Chair of the Lawrence University Board of Trustees
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2003
Lawrence, like many of its peer institutions, faces a growing number of challenges that will surely serve to shape its future. The weak economy and its effect on the endowment and the college's financing, increasing the student body while maintaining the integrity and quality of the academic program, advancing the residential dimension of the undergraduate experience and acquiring the resources needed to support new facilities and amenities, and promoting the mission of the college in a time in which the broader public understanding and appreciation of the value of a liberal education has greatly diminished — these are but a few of the challenges. Not the least of which is the fact that we are at a transitional — one could even say historic — moment, presented by the pending retirement of President Richard Warch.
It falls upon the Board of Trustees to help guide the college through such times of uncertainty and to exercise the trust bestowed upon us to best sustain and advance the welfare of the institution. Alumni and others may well wonder what role the Trustees will have in these developments and how the Board has prepared itself to carry out its responsibilities.
The work of the Board of Trustees
The Bylaws of the university describe the role of trustees thusly: "Final responsibility for the direction and welfare of the university resides in the Board of Trustees." Clearly, however, the Trustees do not directly carry out the college's mission; rather they oversee the work of the administration and hold it accountable for "maintain[ing] an institution of learning on a plan sufficiently extensive to afford instruction in the liberal arts and sciences and to develop the scholar" [from the university charter]. In short, the Board is entrusted with stewardship of the institution and guides (through Trustee-adopted policies) the fulfillment of the university's mission by the faculty and administration.
In practice, the Board's responsibilities are exercised cooperatively and collaboratively with the administration, the faculty, and, to an extent, the student body and the alumni. I should note here that 12 of the Board's 43 members are alumni trustees, who are nominated by the Alumni Association. Indeed, not only does the Board collaborate and share the privileges and responsibilities of authority, in some areas the Trustees explicitly delegate authority to others, such as deferring to the faculty's purview over curricular matters.
The "bible" for governing boards of private colleges is a work called Effective Trusteeship: A Guide for Board Members of Independent Colleges and Universities, by Richard T. Ingram — a must read for all new Lawrence trustees. Ingram lists 12 primary responsibilities, including supporting the president and monitoring the president's performance, ensuring good management, preserving institutional independence, and relating campus to community and community to campus, as well as serving occasionally as a court of appeal. The longer I study the literature in this field, and serve on the Lawrence Board of Trustees, the more I believe trusteeship should focus on three things: setting mission and purposes, appointing a president, and ensuring adequate resources.
Refocusing the trustees' efforts
Some four to five years ago, the leaders of the Board became increasingly convinced that all too many meetings of the Trustees had become bogged down in or preoccupied with the more mundane aspects of the college's operation, such as reviewing committee reports and dealing with agenda items that, in the larger scheme of things, focused on nonessential business. In all honesty, we sometimes gave too much attention to the color of bricks on a new building and too little attention to more important policy issues.
Much has been written recently about the need to reform — indeed, even reinvent — college governance. In that light, the Board undertook an initiative to redirect its energies to focus on large strategic issues. One of the nation's gurus on this subject of board reinvention, Richard Chait of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, was brought to Björklunden for a trustee retreat in October 1999, to help us explore how we might better do our job. Over two days we sought to identify what we believed to be the "Main Things" facing the college — issues Lawrence and the Board needed to address in order to thrive in the 21st century. We reached a broad consensus that the most significant challenges (and opportunities) facing Lawrence in the coming years were to 1) clarify the mission and value of Lawrence's version of liberal education; 2) enlarge and improve the applicant pool and improve student retention; 3) ensure the financial viability of the university; 4) oversee an inevitable leadership transition; and 5) harness the opportunities inherent in information technology.
As everyone who has participated in such a retreat knows, the tough work is in the implementation that follows. The Trustees set about a reorganization of the Board and its meeting/work priorities, with an eye toward enabling us to focus on these Main Things and others that might arise over time. We streamlined the Board's structure and started to organize our meetings differently. Where previously we spent most of our time together (two days, three times a year) meeting and working in committees and then "reporting out" to the full Board in plenary session, we now organize our work at each meeting around a Main Thing.
Armed with information studied in advance, we focus on one key strategic issue confronting the college and on the formulation of policies to address that issue. To enable us to measure effectiveness in the fulfillment of Lawrence's mission, the Trustees developed a set of "dashboard indicators" or key measurements of institutional performance (e.g., selectivity, retention, net tuition revenue, endowment per student, and student/faculty ratios). We return to those indicators frequently and seek to identify trends that inform our work.
We have held ten meetings since the retreat. During the first year our board reorganization was a work in progress, but we went ahead in "Chait Mode" nonetheless, not wanting to lose momentum. Our first Main Thing-based meeting was in January 2000, and we focused upon student retention. In subsequent meetings, our Main Things have included academic planning and the financial challenges brought on by the recession and stock market decline.
Admittedly, we sometimes find ourselves slipping back into the old ways of doing things and need reminding that we best serve Lawrence when we focus on policy, not paperclips, but on the whole, the energies of the Trustees are more concentrated and our contributions are becoming even more meaningful and productive. We've found, not surprisingly, that the Main Things change with time and there is no one static blueprint. In recent months, for example, we've needed to more fully address financial matters, in order to ensure that Lawrence thrives through these challenging economic times.
The search for a worthy successor
Without doubt, the next Main Thing for the Trustees will be the search for Lawrence's 15th president. When Rik Warch retires in June 2004, he will have served an extraordinary 25 years. By all measures, he has led Lawrence with distinction and the college has flourished during his tenure. The selection and appointment of his successor, as well as guiding a smooth transition in leadership, is now the most important challenge and opportunity facing the Board. The officers of the Board have been preparing for this moment for some time, and work is already underway.
One cannot overstate how different this presidential search will be from the ones that came before it. I served on the 1979 search committee (as an alumni representative) and have reveled, as only a history major could, in a review of the records of that committee's work. In some ways, this search process will be like the 1979 search — the Trustees will appoint a search committee made up of alumni, students, faculty, and trustees, and the college will place advertisements in all the usual publications. But the world of higher education has changed dramatically in the two and half decades since our last appointment of a new president, and Lawrence's search will reflect those changes. Here, as I see it, are some of the new realities we face.
Rik Warch would be among the first to tell you that the job he took on in 1979 and the job he performs now are very different indeed. A college president today, even more than yesteryear, must be an individual of multiple talents and predilections. As Alan Guskin and Mary Marcy pointed out in a September/October 2002 article in Trusteeship magazine, "choosing a chief executive has always been a challenge, but the complexities and unpredictability of higher education today have heightened the difficulties. This uncertainty reflects the rapidly changing nature of society as well as the internal pressures for a new kind of leader — one who is expected to provide firm guidance, bring a deep sense of humility marked by collaborative decision making, offer personal attention to external constituencies, and balance the emotional with the intellectual in a sea of ambiguity." It is a rare individual, indeed, who can step up to those expectations.
The era of the long-serving president may be a thing of the past. While two or three decades ago, it was not uncommon for a college or university president to serve at a single institution for ten to 15 years or more, the average tenure today for public university presidents is only five years in office and for presidents of private colleges, about seven years. This places an even greater premium on finding the best fit between the candidate and the college, so as to ensure a more stable period of leadership.
Another feature of present-day presidential searches is that the pace of such endeavors has greatly accelerated. Gone are the days of leisurely correspondence and leisurely deliberation, replaced by teleconferencing and e-mail, expectations of quick action by stakeholders and candidates alike, and the need to move swiftly to attract and sustain the interest of the best and the brightest. We are immensely grateful to Rik Warch for giving us such a long interval to adequately prepare for what will be in practice — in keeping with other presidential searches — a very intense 22-week process. We are more confident of our ability to take on such an important task in such a short amount of time because of the preparation time allotted by Rik's early announcement of his retirement plans.
As the pace of higher education and society has accelerated, so have the complexities of the presidential job market. Fewer and fewer academic deans and other qualified individuals desire to take on the enormous demands and pressures of the modern day college presidency. Finding the right candidate is an even more time-consuming and difficult task in today's environment.
The Trustees at first considered "going it alone" without any outside help but soon realized that would be a mistake. We are not just looking for the next occupant of Sampson House. With this search, Lawrence will take an important step in building the institution itself, and that requires acquiring a level of expertise and experience with such activity that only a specialist can provide. As such, the Board will engage a professional search consulting firm to help plan for and operate the search process.
This is an opportunity to explore our vision for Lawrence, to understand it in new ways, to translate that understanding into a description of our next leader, and to build support among all Lawrence constituencies for the next president. We must marshal the best resources available to realize the significant potential the search affords.
Finally, our search will be different from previous ones because of our aspirations for its success. Because Lawrence is a more ambitious enterprise than it was 25 years ago, and because higher education is so different, we must set very lofty goals for ourselves. Rik Warch and Lawrence grew into a successful pairing during higher education's most dynamic period. Because of where he has taken us, we are able to seek — and we will find — a woman or man who can lead Lawrence to new heights during an extraordinarily challenging period.
How we will proceed
The search process will be an "open" one — that is, we will invite and involve active participation by all constituencies, not only on the search committee but during other stages of the process. We will begin with organizational tasks and a period of pre-search study during which the consultant and the committee will define our goals and devise a plan of operation.
Next, the search team (committee and consultant) will develop two critical documents: an Institutional Profile and a Statement of Leadership Characteristics of the next president. These key writings will be done in consultation with alumni, students, faculty, and staff and ultimately be approved by the Trustees. Once in place, the Profile and Statement of Leadership Characteristics will serve as "touchstones" throughout the process.
The search team will elicit candidates through advertising and from nominations derived from many sources, as well as through the recruiting efforts of the consultant. Then they will screen and evaluate the pool of candidates, narrowing the number to 12-15 and interviewing them off campus. During this period the process will "go dark," with much of the work being done very privately.
The process will come to the surface again in its latter stages, during which candidates will visit campus. We want to be sure the finalists are in Appleton during the peak of Wisconsin's winter (preferably during a blizzard), so we can test their resolve and satisfy all full disclosure requirements! After receiving the search team's recommendations, the Board of Trustees will act upon the appointment in late winter or early spring 2004.
Looking to the future
More information will be provided as the work proceeds, consistent with protection of confidentiality regarding candidacies. In the meantime, of course, life will go on at Lawrence without interruption. We know that Rik Warch will not comfortably relax into "lame duck" status; work, change, and challenge at Lawrence will continue at a rapid pace. Excitement will build for new leadership even as we celebrate the Warch years and all they have meant.
As the Lawrence Board of Trustees has sought to focus on the Main Things that will enable the college to flourish in the future, we have been presented with an opportunity to connect our goals and aspirations to those of a new leader. This confluence of circumstances makes this the best time ever to serve as a trustee. As the ultimate stewards of the college's assets and the body charged with ensuring the fulfillment of Lawrence's mission, the Board seeks in this important time to propel the university forward to the most successful and exciting period in its history.
Sidebar: Membership of the Presidential Search Committee
