Hill News Special Edition - St. Lawrence in Transition

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Courtesy of Tara Freeman

It is hard to overstate the formidable and urgent task that Dan Sullivan faced when he became the 17th president of St. Lawrence University in July 1996.

To strengthen the university and its competitive standing, he needed, among other things, to increase fundraising, increase the number of students applying for admission, increase the number of entering students, improve graduation rates, and renovate an aging physical plant and construct new facilities, including a student center, student townhouses and a state-of-the-art science center. And if he could, he needed to lift spirits because an “us against them” mentality had soured relations between the administration and much of the faculty, recalled Peter Bailey, chair of the English department.

Sullivan, a sociologist, experienced college administrator and a leader in the St. Lawrence class of 1965, enlisted his staff and the board of trustees in a bold strategic plan. Its funding hinged partly on debt financing and its vision was an academically demanding, student-centered, very competitive school.

A university self-study in 2007 explained, “We decided both we must and that we can compete against tier I and tier II institutions and began to make the investments necessary for us to get better faster” than the competition “in all those ways that are important in the liberal arts education of students.”

Many of these key initiatives, like expanding the sports offerings but at the same time insisting that athletes be fully integrated into the academic and extracurricular life of the college, are examined in this Hill News special report. It was written by a journalism class that I teach, and Hill News editors generously assisted in its production.

These stories also profile Bill Fox and consider some of the challenges and opportunities that await him when he becomes SLU’s new president this summer. A tight budget is a certainty, and he may have to grapple with calls for higher salaries, a possible student housing shortage and alienation felt by some minority faculty and students.

But he also will stand on a sturdy foundation, braced by a strong faculty and by values like socioeconomic diversity.

The strategic plan that began to take shape in 1996 largely worked. In recent years, and the number of applicants for admission has mushroomed. Forty-four percent of this year’s entering students were in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

Don Rose, chair of the university’s board of trustees, told a student reporter that a challenge for Bill Fox “will be to maintain this momentum of improvement.”

Sullivan, of course, doesn’t deserve all the credit. He would be the first to thank others - board members, alumni, parents, students, faculty members and highly able administrators like Terry Cowdrey in admissions and Tom Coakley, who oversees capital projects. Ann Sullivan also did so much, in part by organizing hundreds of university dinners, lectures and events and serving as a valuable liaison with the community.

Dan Sullivan, said Bailey, was able to see that “everything is part of everything else” and understood how the parts that make a university strong and vibrant must fit together.

In a recent, brief conversation at the Brewer Bookstore, another faculty member considered Sullivan’s record. She voiced a mild complaint and then, after a pause, added, “But he was always focused on improving the university. He has done a wonderful job.”