Recap of President’s Weekend
The hero of the weekend was none other than Sam Swank, whose last minute monster kick led us to victory. A rolling of the Quad ensued - and for our Monday morning quarterbacking, some purists are arguing whether one ought to roll the Quad for an unranked team. I will simply say that a rolled Quad to me always looks beautiful.
President’s Weekend had a number of great moments - and I will try to recap some of them here. At 4 pm, there was an open discussion with Martha Allman (Director of Admissions) and Bill Wells (Director of Financial Aid) about the SAT policy and our new financial aid goals. Very insightful stuff. Martha mentioned that she is just now receiving the results of the admitted student questionnaires that go out each year (to all those who are admitted - and we get back from people who enroll here and at other schools). She said that 47% of those who enroll at other schools do so because they say they did not receive enough financial aid. So it is an imperative that we get more money to these students. (As an aside, you can give directly to the WF Fund for Student Aid - which goes straight to student aid - at http://www.wfu.edu/alumni/giving/index.php?mode=student_aid - click the Online Giving link).
Former Trustee Bobby Burchfield of DC is our Wake Forest Fund National Chair. We are rebranding our old gift club program under one single name - The Wake Forest Fund. The Wake Forest Fund will recognize donors for their unrestricted giving (i.e., gifts that the University can designate tot he area of greatest need within the College, Calloway School, professional schools, but also Student Aid and the Library). Bobby called unrestricted gifts “the year in, year out lifeblood of the University” - and he is right.
Bobby then had sort of a fireside chat with Dr. Hatch - which was very interesting. They began with reflections on Dr. Hearn and his legacy, and Dr. Hatch did a tremendous job capturing the essence of the greatness of TKH’s tenure. He said - and all of this is roughly paraphrased - that TK never forgot that the best of Wake FOrest is providing an excellent education in a face-to-face community. That he was surprised when he first came at how delighted parents and students are to come here - that there is a certain WF magic.
In terms of looking forward, NOH said that we have been a place of modest resources but extraordinary results - where there’s a will at WF, there’s a way.
NOH also mentioned that we have been countercultural in some ways in our strategic thinking. Where other top schools are trying to be research universities, we have been about the teacher-scholar model and understand that we must keep the richness of the graduate and professional schools but take students seriously. That we understand the deeply personal nature of education - and this distinguishes us from the others.
Bobby asked NOH about the idea of WF being a ‘crossroads for national and international discussions’ - and NOH said that we need to expose our students to the finest minds on pressing current issues. That we can never be provincial - but instead must offer “a very rich banquet” for our students on the issues of our time. He made a distinction that we try to offer “understanding, not advocacy” - our role is to promote thinking and understanding, not a specific point of view - and that’s why we had both Hillary Clinton and John McCain to campus - and had an open invitation to the other candidates.
Provost Jill Tiefenthaler was up next. She talked about our Strategic Plan and some of its components. Our challenge is to define our niche in higher education, identify key components of our distinction, and create an action plan to secure our goals.
Our niche is the “Collegiate University” - and the strengths of it are that we are a face-to-face community where people engage deeply with learning and with each other. We are grounded in the liberal arts but passionate about graduate and professional education. Another distinctive is our emphasis on living the Pro Humanitate motto. Among the action items to secure our goals are to build the best faculty, increase financial aid, educate the whole person, develop stronger ties between departments and schools, create mentoring and professional networks, strengthen international presence and diversity, and student service opportunities.
JT said a telling thing about our Collegiate University is that all our schools (undergrad, grad and professional) are strong on their own, but they can come together in important ways. I will add that I think our relatively small size lets us work together in ways that can not happen at larger, more siloed (is that even a word?) universities.
As if to emphasize that blending of schools and opinions, Jill then went on to interview 3 of the professional school deans - Bill Leonard of the Divinity School, Steve Reinemund of Business, and Blake Morant of Law. Select highights of each:
Blake mentioned that law students need to learn more than just doctrine, they need to learn how to be pillars of society with strong community citizenship - a “Citizen-Lawyer” he called it
Bill talked about how the divinity students go immediately into internships at churches, chaplaincies or non profits - and talked about the importance of networking and learning from the other schools and departments here. Bill had the best line of the night, saying for divinity students, “networking is second only to Jesus.”
Steve was asked about his views on diversity, and he said that he learned in business that if the company doesn’t represent the marketplace “from the front line to the boardroom” you can’t be successful. It’s a business imperative to be diverse but it’s also the right thing to do.
They are as impressive a group of deans as I have ever seen at Wake Forest, and ditto for the provost. This is a very, very exciting time to be a Deac. We have tremendous leadership from the president on down and they have a deep understanding of our desire to be uniquely Wake Forest - and the best WF we can be.
Good times.