State of the College Address

Boldly Baldwin: Executing Excellence

August 27, 2008
President Pamela Fox

Printable Version (PDF - 181 KB)
PowerPoint Presentation (PPT - 23 MB)

Judith Godwin Blue Arrow

Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125 represents the apotheosis of Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphonies. Since its premiere in 1824 — just 18 years before the founding of Mary Baldwin College — this masterpiece has been performed countless times to underscore momentous occasions such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the tragedy of September 11. Symphony No 9 incorporates portions of Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” poem, sung by soloists and chorus in the finale. As the pathbreaking experiment of interjecting the human voice within the symphonic genre, the bold innovations of its grand scope evoke the power of ties that transcend nations, faiths, races, and cultures.

Let’s hear the opening of the 4th movement: it begins with a stormy presto passage of disruptive dissonance — called the “fanfare of terror” by Richard Wagner. Recitative passages in the lower strings evoke dialogue as short bits of the themes from the first three movements are recalled. Then, resounding beyond this complexity, the audacious simplicity of the “Ode to Joy” theme emerges with affirming universality.

Mary Baldwin College community, we open our 167th year, our fifth year and half-way point in the pursuit of our 10-year strategic plan, Composing Our Future. Let us proclaim with conviction the powerful simplicity of who we are: Boldly Baldwin. This morning I share with you four manifestations of our audacious spirit.

(1) Boldly Baldwin: We exceed our expectations.

Last year we entered Phase II of Composing Our Future — Invest and Innovate. We launched a new cycle of innovation to seize the momentous opportunities before us. I asked you to call upon the confidence that has driven our entrepreneurial spirit as creative change-makers. We believe our creativity transforms this college and the lives it touches. Therein resides our future.

We invested strategically, supported by the Hipp Innovation Fund.

The results exceeded our expectations.

I am humbled, but not surprised by your response. Everyone shares in the measure of this success. It is yours. Congratulations and thank you.

Your collective intellectual energy and imagination brought forth thirteen new and enhanced academic programs.

Several of these programs, including the Bachelor of Social Work, our new five-year undergraduate/graduate tracks in the Master of Letters in Shakespeare and Master of Arts in Teaching, and enhancements to premedical sciences and the physical sciences are in place. They already affected yield and enrollment of talented students for our incoming classes as we predicted. Next summer we plan to conduct our first PEG academy for gifted girls in grades five through eight. Numerous other programs are nearing the final stages of development, including an innovative new liberal-arts based business major; a minor in civic engagement featuring a semester of service; further enhancements to our strength in preparing teachers; digital media arts; neuroscience; language across the curriculum; and much more.

Our investment in enhanced recruiting for PEG and VWIL yielded impressive results. Last week we welcomed 63 new VWIL cadets, an increase of 26 percent. Today we welcome 34 PEGS, up 30 percent. Both matriculate the largest classes in each program’s history. As we advance toward our goal of 1000 Residential College for Women students, we met our goal of 311 new students. The Adult Degree Program once again exceeded its aggressive growth goals. Supporting this success is the ceaseless dedication of our advisors and faculty, the opening of our sixth regional center at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, preparations to open our seventh center at Rappahannock Community College, and the installation of a virtual technology classroom in our new Richmond Center. The Master of Arts in Teaching also exceeded its goals, and enjoyed an outstanding summer with a creative slate of courses in environment-based learning. The largest entering class in MAT history matriculates this fall. MLitt/MFA welcomes its seventh class, following an outstanding year of Shakespearean scholarship and stagecraft.

Once again this year we stand in the top 25 master’s level universities in the South in U.S.News & World Report. We will be featured the September 1 issue for being among 15 master’s-level universities in the South recognized as “Great Schools, Great Prices” and in the 2008 edition of Barron’s Best Buys in College Education.

Last year our faculty published five books, 10 reviews, and 40 articles and chapters; they delivered 40 scholarly presentations and mounted 14 artistic exhibitions and performances. In its first year, the Spencer Center has truly positioned our commitment to civic engagement in a global context at the heart of our mission. Targeted investment in merit scholarships through competitive application yielded our first group of incoming Spencer Citizens. One hundred and eighteen undergraduate and graduate students studied abroad during May Term 2008. A generous three-year grant from the Richard Reynolds Foundations provided study abroad stipends.

We anticipate the first full year of the Spencer Center’s work as our second annual college-wide theme Maps springs to life in September. Two artists-in-residence return — Claudia Bernardi and Srinivas Krishnan — to chart the journey of Mapping Peace: Artists as Peace Practitioners. Also, on October 24th, our Alumnae/i College will feature Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the National Human Genome Institute, as we celebrate Fletcher and Margaret Collins and ponder the complex multidisciplinary scientific enterprise directed at mapping and sequencing all of the human DNA.

Our inaugural year in the USA South Athletic Conference was successful and heightened school spirit. This year, we will debut the “Mary Baldwin College Fight Song,” sung to the traditional Blue and Gold tune of the Staunton Military Academy.

The Campaign for Mary Baldwin College gained momentum. We exceeded our goal in the Annual Fund, raising $2.3 million. We concluded our three-year Annual Fund challenge above goal, through the generosity of our alumnae/i and their Reunion Classes. The Bertie Deming Smith Challenge was exceeded, raising a total of $17.9 million.

This success made it possible to achieve a balanced budget and to keep our long-term strategic financial plans on track. We, as all institutions, and you and your families as well, are adjusting to a volatile market and an uncertain economy that includes our decline in state support for VWIL and a necessary five percent reduction in operating expenses in all areas except Academic Affairs. So, while our salary improvement pools benefitted 26 faculty and two-thirds of our hourly employees, we will keep compensation as a high priority. Our endowment held up well in the face of market turmoil, thanks to our investment policies. We will hold our annual budget forums in September.

This five-year phase of investing and innovating will steadfastly adhere to seven priorities: Enroll, Support, Create, Align, Complete, and Manage. So Invest and Innovate Year 2 will continue to create, fueling our cycle of innovation. I again call upon your creativity. Thread by thread, we are weaving the fabric of our plan’s success. However, under the category of “Support” we did not meet our expectations. Retention did not improve. Our second manifestation is also an imperative:

(2) Boldly Baldwin: We commit to first-year excellence.

Let’s Enable First-Year Residential College Students to Exceed Their Expectations.

We celebrate the confident scholars in our sophomore, junior, and senior classes. We aspire that all first-year students, as well, seize the transformational opportunities of a Mary Baldwin education. Our participation in the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement clearly demonstrated the superior achievements of our seniors, with scores that exceeded the national averages and the scores of all women’s colleges. Our first-year students scored well but did not lead the way.

Here is our goal: Excellence for every woman every day.

Student success in the Residential College means engaging every woman inside and outside the classroom — academically, culturally, and socially.

We understand the issues that currently affect student success. We must decisively escalate our ongoing efforts by elevating first-year excellence to one of the highest all-college priorities for the next four years. To do this, we will:

• Truly make personal transformation our priority, becoming a student-centered campus. This is what the strategic plan pyramid mandates.
• Commit to all the students we serve by developing an intentional and comprehensive first-year experience inside and outside the classroom. This will include dedicated first-year courses and MBC 101. It will include gateways to success for every entering RCW student, expanding our signature program concept to all by the Fall of 2009.

Anna Kate and Hayne Hipp will generously fund the first-year excellence initiative this year. Professor Anne McGovern has agreed to lead a First-Year Excellence Faculty Community to explore enhancements to first-year courses. We will study best practices at other colleges and universities and benefit from the consultation of the leading scholars and researchers on the first-year experience in the United States: John Gardner and Dr. Betsy Barefoot. Gardner is the founder of the international movement on the first-year experience and executive director of the Policy Center on the First-Year Experience in North Carolina. Dr. Barefoot is co-director and the Center’s senior scholar. She will be on campus September 17–18.

We want to offer our first-year students an orienteering map to their Mary Baldwin experience. A map of the imaginative expectation. Let’s help them get a fix on the multitude of landscapes, assisting them to chart the grid of wisdom, a private cartography that values the mind as a dynamic vessel of exploration.

This initiative is not about changes at the margin or pilot experimentation. It is a comprehensive and intentional prioritization of funded focus on first-year excellence. It will succeed and our students will succeed.

In the musical Sunday in the Park With George, Stephen Sondheim presents a centerpiece ensemble song titled “Putting It Together.” It reminds us “having a vision’s no solution. Everything depends on execution.” Let’s listen to the Broadway cast recording.

Bit by bit, putting it together.
Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part.
Having just a vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution
Putting it together, that's what counts! [etc]

Art isn’t easy. Everything depends on execution. Innovation is execution — it is not the creation of ideas alone but the bringing of them to life. So here is the third manifestation.

(3) Boldly Baldwin: Command the courage to be extraordinary.

Execute Excellence.

As Ovid stated, “There is no excellence without difficulty.” The road to excellence is always under construction.

As our strategic plan demands of us, in uniting and enriching our community, we recognize that the college is a powerful community.

We are a community of high expectations — for ourselves as a college, in operations and aspirations, and for our students. Out of respect for each other and passion for our mission, we must align our work to our overarching goal of making personal transformation our priority, ensuring a student-centered environment for all.

Excellence thrives when divisional walls are down. Robust dialogue promotes cross-college knowledge of processes.

To that end, we will evolve the President’s Advisory Team into a true Community Council, with student representatives. The Council will work closely with our faculty governance system and Student Senate. We will seek input from our volunteer leadership boards and alumnae/i. Rather than being presentational in format, monthly meetings will include discussion and problem-solving. In the course of the year, I will charge the council to address key issues supporting student success and present to me a series of prioritized recommendations, but I will not chair the council.

I like Booker T. Washington’s guidance: “Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” As we all approach our work this year, I ask that we:

• Strive for clarity
• Challenge processes
• Facilitate solutions, even to long-standing and difficult, unresolved issues.

In addition, we will continue to execute bold new approaches to enrollment management. Our multi-year consultancy with Noel Levitz was very successful. Yet, national trends are clear: a perfect storm awaits on the horizon of higher education as a confluence of three gales — changing demography, rising cost to attend, and increased competition for students and donated dollars. While the market for full-time residential students will continue to decline for at least a generation, there are six growth markets in higher education that MBC is positioned to capture:

• Women (of almost all ages)
• Adult students, including seniors
• Students of color
• International students
• Commuter students
• Part-time students

Some colleges are unwilling or unable to make the prudent and brave decisions to remain viable by truly differentiating themselves. We have the courage.

We will be assisted in new recruitment efforts by the firm of Human Capital Resource Corporation in Chicago. Their expertise matches prospective students from across the nation to the strength of our academic programs and innovative liberal arts curriculum. This firm brings to us proven skills in econometrics and financial aid management.

We will execute new milestones within The Campaign for Mary Baldwin College. The Hipps’ support of our enrollment strategy will be matched this year by Claire Lewis “Yum” Arnold (Class of 1969) and H. Ross Arnold III. Moreover, I am honored to announce that the Arnolds will provide a generous total campaign gift, their largest to date, to invest in our strategic initiatives through the Arnold 2014 Innovation Fund. The Arnold Fund was created with gifts from every member of the Board of Trustees in 2004 to honor Yum’s remarkable tenure as Board Chair. The Arnolds’ campaign gift will now create a significant resource for investment and innovation strategies over the remainder of the strategic plan. Yum is serving as co-chair of The Campaign for Mary Baldwin College, alongside Trustee Lyn McDermid (Class of 1995).

Here is the Boldly Baldwin spirit behind the Arnolds’ gift, in Yum’s words:

Ross and I are excited about Mary Baldwin…our strong foundation in the liberal arts, our growth into a vibrant contemporary learning community, and the force of our momentum moving forward. Mary Baldwin remains a vibrant leader in higher education because of its willingness to consider new ideas within the context of its heritage. It is this entrepreneurial spirit that assures us that our contributions to Mary Baldwin will work harder, go farther, and create greater impact than in other places we know. We are grateful to be a member of this community.

In the current leadership gifts phase, we prioritize scholarship endowments and capital projects to enhance academic facilities. Trustee Margaret Wren de St. Aubin has established a named scholarship to be awarded to an incoming RCW student expressing a commitment to a path of student leadership. Two of our Trustees have named and endowed study abroad stipends: we are grateful for the campaign gifts of Sally Armstrong Bingley (class of 1960) in honor of C. Perry Nair, Jr.; and Dr. Sue Whitlock (class of 1967), in honor of Thelma B. McDowell.

We need to begin the renovation of Pearce Science Center immediately following Commencement in May 2010. Our plans are complete. The Dominion Foundation has granted us $100,000 toward the renovation. Room by room we will accomplish this. Our Trustees are leading the way here as well.

• Pearce 414 will become the Lucinda “Luly” P. Wilkinson Chemistry Laboratory. Luly attended Mary Baldwin in 1962 as an exchange student from the University of Madrid and was a chemistry major. She passed away in April 2000, having served as an active alumna on the Advisory Board of Visitors. Her son, Donald Wilkinson III, currently serves on the Board of Trustees and makes this $250,000 gift in her honor. Mr. Wilkinson is leading the Pearce fundraising effort and will be assisted by Dr. Tenea Watson Nelson, Class of 1998, who is currently director of diversity and outreach programs for genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
• Pearce 311 will be named The Mary E. Humphreys Biology Laboratory; the renovation gift is given in her honor by Janet Russell Steelman, Class of 1952. Dr. Humphreys taught biology here from 1943 to 1968 and recently celebrated her 97th birthday! Mrs. Steelman, who currently serves on the Board, is the great-granddaughter of the founder of Staunton Military Academy and the granddaughter of Margaret Kable Russell, MBC 1902, early organizer of the MBC Alumnae Association and the first woman on the MBC Board of Trustees.

Plans for the creation of the Village for the Arts are nearing completion. The complete renovation of Deming will include a new choral rehearsal/recital space. A connector to Kable leads to a new home for the Fletcher Collins Theatre in the current Kable pool area. SAC will be the renovated home for studio art and art history, including the new digital media studio. Support for improving our residence halls, athletic facilities, and program endowments are also priorities. Our renovation plans will be environmentally responsible, living up to the American Presidents’ College and University Climate Commitment that I signed last year.

And finally, our fourth manifestation:
Proclaim Boldly Baldwin

Let us be clear in expressing our shared identity. Let us proclaim it boldly to ourselves, our prospective students, through our alumnae/i, and to the national arena of higher education. Let us never be at a loss to answer the questions: Why Mary Baldwin? Why now? Why me? Let’s own and share the position of this college like no other.

Mary Baldwin College is not a collection of programs. The strength of the whole is singular and compelling. It is lived in who we are, how we educate, and who we serve at this, one of the most diverse colleges in America.

Mary Baldwin College has created a vitally important model for higher education, through which students exceed even their own aspirations and learn to be creative change-makers engaged meaningfully with global issues.

We have high expectations of our students, indeed an unshakeable belief in the women and men who aspire to significance throughout their lives. We believe that an innovative liberal arts education will instill in our graduates the knowledge, creativity, discipline, and personal determination to thrive in their own lives and to contribute to their communities and the world. We are committed to an inclusive and powerful community and to serving society by creating and upholding this educational model.

MBC has demonstrated the courage to produce transformational opportunities for 167 years. Let’s convey this ethos to our students. Think about Mary Julia Baldwin. She entered Augusta Female Seminary when she was a 13-year old orphan, uncomfortable with her physical appearance but possessed of high aspirations. She lead the seminary by modeling innovation and excellence, converting the modest Administration Building into a stunning visual symbol of prosperity. Our alumnae/i over the ages demonstrate the courage to become extraordinary.

We know this institution creates:

• Women and men who are beyond category. Confident. Compassionate. Creative change-makers. Disciplined. Making a difference.

We hold a radical belief in them. Of course, we must believe radically in ourselves and model the way.

Judith Godwin, who attended Mary Baldwin College in the early 1950s, is a renowned artist with works in the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and many other collections. At Mary Baldwin Judith was inspired by the campus visit of renowned dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. In New York, she joined the abstract expressionist school of Hans Hoffman, and was influenced by Zen Buddhism, Japanese abstract painting, and jazz. She had an affiliation with nature and architecture from her youth in Virginia. Her work is gestural with dynamic color movement. You can see the rhythms of the body as inspired by Graham and the wonders of nature. This work, from 1995, is entitled Blue Arrow. There are no boundaries. The implication is that the forms extend beyond the frame. Countless ideas coexist in Godwin’s work at any time. There is strength, energy, and ambition. Judith Godwin has put the pieces together. Educated by the ethos of Mary Baldwin, her work also visually represents our spirit.

Boldly Baldwin.

1. We exceed our expectations.
2. We commit to success for every student.
3. We command the courage to be extraordinary.
4. We proclaim it boldly.

We believe.

Autograph your work with excellence.

As the human voice enters in the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, friends, let us resound the simplicity of conviction as this inspirational work concludes.

Thank you very much.

Questions? Please contact: Office of Communication, Marketing, and Public Affairs