Camille Pfister, Editor In Chief
Chloe Wright, Junior Editor
This article has been edited lightly for clarity.
You’ve had a year here at Sewanee. What have you learned? What are you most proud of?
I’ve been reminded what an outstanding institution this is and what remarkable students, faculty and staff we have here. I was away for almost 13 years and stayed a bit in touch but not deeply, so it’s been a privilege to be back here and re-engage with an institution that has such strength and so much potential moving forward. Most proud of – two things, one internal and one external. Most proud that we were able to accomplish the completion and approval of a new Strategic Plan. You’ve probably seen this: ‘Elevating Mind, Heart, and Place.” Getting that done in a short period of time; a plan that is ambitious and forward looking, is great and a real accomplishment. A lot of credit to Provost Scott Wilson, faculty and staff, and students who were involved.
On the external front, very pleased that I was able to participate in 42 Sewanee club events around the country. There were over 4000 alumni, parents, and some students who were able to attend those events. Really great to be able to reconnect with the Sewanee family by being in so many of our major cities.
What’s underway this fall regarding the Strategic Plan the Board of Trustees approved over the summer?
We had the Vice Chancellor’s cabinet [meet] from May to the end of August to begin the process of identifying how to effectuate a new plan, that is to say, assigning responsibilities to people, thinking about timelines and the cost involved, and how to measure success. So, we are in that important “effectuating the plan” mode. Often, plans get sort of put on the shelf, but we’re full steam ahead.
Alongside the Strategic Plan, we also developed an Operational Plan, which is parallel to the Strategic Plan. It comes from the early days of thinking about strategic planning. There were a lot of tactical or operational issues that came to our attention: questions about compensation for faculty and staff, deferred maintenance in the residence halls, or transportation and logistics on campus. I’m really glad that, while we were developing the Strategic Plan, we developed this Operational Plan to deal with things that just needed to be dealt with sooner than later.
While the Strategic Plan may have longer term implications, we knew there were some very specific and important things to take care of. I’m very glad we have these two plans working in unison.
What are the high points from the Regents meeting during the week of September 9?
We spent time talking about last year and the different events that happened over the year while also giving an update on those developments. We talked about our University Relations Office and its work and success with fundraising and the work that’s been done in the village through Sewanee Village Ventures to activate and bring more things to the Village. There was a good amount of talk about progress from last year. We also spent time talking about what’s ahead about our ongoing effort to support our admissions, deferred maintenance in campus enhancements, and the Strategic Plan and the ways we can support it.
In particular, we spoke about the role of the institution as an Episcopal university, what the current state of affairs is in the Episcopal church, the relationship between the university and the church, and how to elevate our connection and influence Sewanee has as the one of only seven seminaries in the Episcopal church today. There was a good deal of discussion about our Episcopal heritage and identity.
Finally, we are in the year in which we will be doing our reaccreditation. Every institution has to go through a reaccreditation process [every 10 years], and this is the year we will be writing our report. One of the important elements of that reaccreditation is for the board to validate and reaffirm the mission of the University. It was a healthy discussion of our mission and purpose and if it’s still who we are and where we want to be.
I’m very grateful for the leadership of Jim Folds ((C’ 86) Chapel Hill, NC). He’s been the chair of the Board of Regents for the last two years and finished up his two-year term. The Board elected a new chair, Dr. Renia Dotson ((C ‘88) Monroeville, AL), who has now begun her service as chair.
Can you say anything about the process about finding a permanent chaplain?
I’m really grateful that [Rev. Dr. Nancee Martin] has agreed to serve on an interim basis; likely to be through this academic year. She has two degrees from the School of Theology and has four children who graduated from Sewanee. She was a Trustee for two terms and also a member on the Board of Regents for six years. She knows Sewanee well. I think we’re in great hands with Nancee. We will soon begin the process of developing the profile for what we are looking for in the next chaplain. It’s not going to be fundamentally different from profiles in the past. But we do want to think about the role, the heritage, the identity, of the church and how we think about what the next chaplain should be. There will be a group that will be advising me in that process, and I hope to get the word out soon that we’re doing the search. The plan will be to conduct a search and hire someone during the course of this academic year and have someone – hopefully, by next summer.
What has happened with the construction of the apartments? Are there any updates the student body should know?
When we got our final cost for the apartments, it was much higher than we were expecting. So, we are having to take a big step back and look at the financing of the plan in order to get those costs down. The plan was to have forty-eight units, so does it mean we reduce that to some number? But we would have less financial gain from the building if we reduce the units. We know we need to develop the apartments; there’s no question that we need housing for our faculty and staff. There isn’t anything to report right now, but we hope to be getting there soon.
Tell us about the timeline for the dorms Hunter and McCrady.
We took both Hunter and McCrady offline this year and are working with architects now to develop plans for a full renovation of those two facilities, which will require elevators and very expensive propositions. The current thinking is that we should have those plans by early spring. It might very well be we do one at a time instead of both. It’s going to be very expensive to do both residential halls, over twenty million dollars.
McCrady is larger, and with our enrollment being pretty healthy since we have a really strong first year class, we may need the space in McCrady sooner than later. So we can potentially renovate Hunter first and come back to McCrady after finishing Hunter. It’s not a decision at this point, just a possibility. We’ll have about sixty more students coming back from study away, so we need to make sure we have space for them.
On a positive note, [in the summer of 2023], we did about a half million dollar cosmetic renovation of McCrady. It did get a nice touch last year, so it’s probably in better shape than Hunter. Between the two that we might want to use in the spring, McCrady is the better option.
I am pleased we also did renovation of Gorgas this summer. We painted, refurbished the carpet, and put in air conditioning units, which I understand was very popular amongst the students. We heard our students loud and clear, so I’m glad we were able to put the units in.
There were some concerns with the Events Policy, and they recently revised it. What are your hopes with the cultivation of this policy?
I think we decided not to go down the path of more intensive monitoring at the parties. That’s probably smart to pause on that to look at it more closely and think about whether that was the right thing to do. So, I’m glad it’s been revisited. Now, it’s a matter of encouraging students to be respectful of the policy we have. I think it’s important to have a good, responsible, and accountable policy with our students to respect it.
At the end of last semester, you met with several student protesters. You discussed transparency on Sewanee’s endowments supplying war material to Israel during this ongoing war in Gaza. How has that discussion progressed since then?
We promised the students back in the spring that we would give them an opportunity to meet with members of our Board of Regents, to hear more about our investment policies, strategies, and process, and we did that in early June. A half dozen students were here. It was a good opportunity to share thoughts and ideas. We weren’t going in there with any kind of commitments to make decisions, but we did want to be clear about the process. I thought those conversations were very helpful. We are continuing to study our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) process, and as I mentioned in an email sent to students a couple of weeks ago, the ESG policy is under consideration now. I think we made some progress. We will do as we said we would do. That is: share at the appropriate level the kind of investments we are making. I’m glad we are moving in that direction. I believe we are in a better place because of it. We have moved to a different investment partner, and they have been very helpful as part of this process as we move forward.
Did that conversation impact the change in the political policy students received a few days ago?
We’ve had a policy for some time on that front. Sometimes when you have events like [protests or political events] it allows you to step back and think better about how this went and are there things we can learn from it. For me, it’s always a matter of what we have learned from this that is important going forward. We will continue to be a campus that is open and [has] a free exchange of ideas. We want voices to be heard. We want the setting to be one in which students’ interest in voicing their opinions is respected, but we also want to make sure that the campus climate is respectful and we’re able to go about our daily activities as a campus in a way that is appropriate. There were not wholesale changes to anything as a result of last year, but I think we’re in a good place in terms of continuing to honor free speech and recognizing the importance of the business of the University being carried out.
The student body feels like these new event and political policies have been presented to us without student input. Is there a plan to include student voices in future policy discussion and revisions, like how you did with the Strategic Plan?
I’m told that last Spring, the Student Life Team did meet with student leaders as they were thinking about making changes to policies. I don’t think those changes were made without some student input. I can’t say that I know if students were involved with the final policy that was rolled out. At a higher level, I think it’s really important for the student voices to be heard and for it to ensure the inclusion of voices from across the student body. That kind of input is really important to me. From one policy to the next, it may vary how much input students have, but in general, it’s important y’all’s voices are heard. I encourage students to use [student organizations] for offering thoughts and ideas to the administration.
What are you most excited about in the Fall semester?
I’m excited to have the students back. The summer is a busy time at Sewanee, but it’s always great when the students are back. I’m real excited about the opportunity to see the new Strategic Plan begin to take life. The plan is really all about students. It’s student centered. If you read this plan carefully, you’ll see that the students’ interests run throughout it. That’s really important. I’m real excited about this first-year class that exceeded our goals and expectations and seems to be a really great class with a lot of energy and spirit. A short story: We did the Honor Code induction ceremony, and after we signed it, we sang the Alma Mater. For most of the students in the chapel, they’ve never heard the Alma Mater. They’ve never sung it. So we had a couple upperclass students to help lead the singing. So the first year students, they sang it- sort of- but when it was over, they all clapped, they all applauded. … I thought that was a really neat sign of a group of new students who seemed to be really happy to be here, and excited about the year ahead. That’s what I’m excited about: I’m excited about their excitement.