back to the top

Provost Roy Austensen, Valparaiso University, introduces Carol Geary Schneider at ANAC/AACU Conference on January 17.

back to the top

Host CFO Phil Doolittle asks "What more can I do?" at the Redlands CFO Conference and an amused George Herbst, CFO at Rollins, looks on.

ANAC Presidents, Institutional Representatives, and CFO's Gather in Busy Winter Round of Meetings

ANAC's President Council held its winter meeting on January 30, in Washington, DC, in connection with the 25th anniversary conference of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). A turnout of thirteen presidents heard presentations from Woodrow Wilson Foundation president Robert Weisbuch, Media Project advisor Maggy Ralbovsky, and Institutional Profiles project director Cecil Staton; discussed new project and grant initiatives ANAC might undertake; and considered Council involvement in the ANAC 2005 planning process. Particular interest was expressed in an ANAC project to attract minority students at member institutions to doctoral studies and future careers in the professoriate at comprehensive colleges and universities. The meeting was chaired by Loren Anderson, president of Pacific Lutheran University who is also the new chair of the NAICU Board.

The early days of the Bush Administration added interest to the NAICU Conference this year. Speakers included Senator Ted Kennedy who spoke hopefully of President Bush's commitment to education; Roderick Paige, the new Secretary of Education, who outlined an eight point plan for education that featured increased Pell grant funding, a commitment to each child, annual grades 3-8 testing, and greater school support and accountability, and called for school-college partnerships and college and university engagement in community renewal; and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions who praised private college and university contributions to the strengths of pluralism in American higher education.

ANAC's Institutional Representatives meeting in New Orleans, January 17-18, during the AACU annual conference, selected James Malek, provost at Ithaca College as ANAC chair-elect to succeed Betty Ivey as chair on July 1, 2001, and Ron Troyer, provost at Drake University, as vice-chair. The representatives also created an executive committee (Betty Ivey, James Malek, Russell Warren, Warren Funk, and Ron Troyer) to facilitate organizational matters between meetings, decided to hold a planning retreat, March 16-17, approved ANAC's preliminary 2001-02 budget, and created a sub-committee (Ivey, Malek, Troyer, and Gerald Francis) to review ANAC's membership policies. The institutional representative standing committees also met and recommended a plan for the Woodrow Wilson Summer Institute, emphasizing the role of department chairs in implementing the Faculty Work Project report and continuation of several grant project initiatives which the representatives as a body endorsed. Finally the group agreed to review at the March 16-17 retreat a new draft of an ANAC desirable faculty characteristics statement, as a document for communicating with doctoral-granting institutions and potential faculty candidates interested in careers at ANAC member institutions.

As part of the AACU Conference program, January 18-20, ANAC sponsored two sessions. In one session Linda McMillin, project manager, of Susquehanna University, presented the results and recommendations of ANAC's Faculty Work Project and Jim Malek, provost Ithaca College, and Ed Biglin, faculty chair at Saint Mary's College of California, presented case studies of efforts on their campuses to adjust and differentiate faculty workload to better serve institutional purposes and faculty needs. The second session, on the theme of innovations revitalizing liberal learning, included case studies of experiential learning at Elon College (Gerald Francis, provost) and integration of liberal and professional studies at the University of the Pacific (Heather Mayne, assistant provost); description of a national Society for Values in Higher Education civic education and community engagement project involving the University of Hartford (Nancy Thomas, director); and an analysis by Warren Funk, provost at Susquehanna University, of ways of thinking about the process of liberal learning in relationship to technology.

Phil Glotzbach, provost at the University of Redlands, introduces (from left) Gerald Francis, Heather Mayne, Nancy Thomas, and Warren Funk at their AACU session.

ANAC CFO's engaged provocative speakers on a variety of topics at their annual benchmarking conference, February 8-10, on the beautiful campus of the University of Redlands. Thirteen ANAC chief finance officers and several of their business office colleagues were treated to a series of substantive presentations on topics ranging from dominant higher education trends and institutional debt and financial aid policies to strategic planning for e-learning and virtual technologies. The group also received a detailed analysis of financial ratios derived from member audited financial statements and viewed online Year II ANAC Data Exchange benchmarks the CFO's had identified for tracking last year. Larry Goldstein, vice president of NACUBO, updated the group on NACUBO projects that particularly impact ANAC members and encouraged the group to participate in NACUBO's financial report card project and the small institution financial survey. The former is a continuation of the Congressional higher education cost project initiated two years ago in which Susquehanna University has been a participant.

Presenters included Richard DeProspo, managing director, Prager, McCarthy & Sealy; Susan Fitzgerald, vice president, Moody's Investors Service, William Hall, president, Applied Policy Research Inc; William Graves, chairman and founder, Eduprise Enterprise e-Learning Services. Adding a special touch to the rich interaction of the conference sessions, the group enjoyed lodging at the historic and one-of-a-kind Mission Inn in Riverside and took the breathtaking Palm Springs aerial tram to near the summit of Mt. San Jacinto (at 8,000 ft.) after the conference concluded. Phil Doolittle, host CFO at Redlands, both organized a superbly useful gathering and set the standard for CFO meetings in the future. James Appleton, president at Redlands, provided a short history of ANAC's early days as a study group of provosts who met with Ernest Boyer at Redlands in 1992, in what initiated a series of twice yearly meetings prior to ANAC's formal founding as an organization in 1995.

Phil Doolittle is proud to show off his campus to CFO colleagues who are delighted to be in southern California in February.