November 7, 2005

The Board of Trustees met at the end of last week. Here are excerpts from President Hochstettler’s report to the board:

My report to the Board deals with many new beginnings at Lewis & Clark, and I want to take this occasion to call attention to three initiatives in particular that are currently underway, which, taken together, seem to me to herald a rejuvenation of spirit and vitality on our campus.

Planning Initiative and Planning Task Force: Although the first meeting of the Task Force is scheduled to take place more than two weeks from [mid-October], the very fact that a planning group is convening has by itself already been the occasion for a great deal of creative dialog on campus about our collective future. As I conceive of the Task Force and its work, this group of some three-dozen individuals from all areas of campus life will be tackling several overarching questions that should be of concern, with varying degrees of urgency, to everyone in our community. The Task Force will not be involved in the vetting of concrete initiatives or building projects during the course of its deliberations. Instead, its work will be far more fundamental, namely, to articulate the common principles and prioritize the broader purposes of the institution that can then serve as a foundation for more detailed programmatic planning in the years to come. This initial work, these initial discussions are an essential first step in charting our course from here on and will, if we are diligent, serve as a solid grounding for the future growth in quality and reputation of Lewis & Clark. The Board Members who have agreed to serve as active members of the Planning Task Force are John Bates, Peter Chang, Steven Dover, and Carr Ferguson. I am most grateful to these Trustees for their willingness to serve, but I want everyone on the Board to know that your input and engagement in the work of the Task Force is heartily encouraged, either by communicating concerns and issues to the four named members, or by joining one of the working subgroups that will perform much of the nuts-and-bolts work of the Task Force.

Athletics: A second area where I see great beginnings at Lewis & Clark is that of athletics. With the crisis in the football program coming to a head earlier this fall, our community has been faced with the need to examine fundamentally the role of sports on campus. Dean de Paula’s Football Commission is working hard at assembling information and reviewing what might be done to save the football program, and that work will not be completed until the middle of November 2005. In the meantime, I have been listening very hard to students … and have learned that Lewis & Clark undergraduates are as a group very much interested in sports. By our last reckoning, 54 percent of our students participate in varsity, club, and/or intramural sports. We field varsity teams in nineteen sports, and an additional thirteen club sports provide student-sponsored opportunities for athletic competition. The outpouring of support and enthusiasm by the students for their football team during its two non-conference home games this year, while not entirely unexpected, was certainly a refreshing antidote to the apathy that has in recent years tended to erode Pio spirit. Our task now is to encourage the greater integration—some might say re-integration—of sports into student life in ways that are meaningful for students on the one hand and that respect the rich traditions of the College on the other.

Alumni: A third area where I see renewal at Lewis & Clark is in the area of alumni involvement. As of [mid-October] there are nearly 600 alumnae and alumni who have registered to attend the events of Alumni Weekend, which kicks off only a few days from now. This, I am told, is something of a record for the College in recent years and can be attributed in part to the hard work of the Alumni Office staff, but also to the involvement of class agents in the process of personally inviting members of the anniversary classes to campus for the festivities. I look forward eagerly to greeting many of our returning alums and to the robust exchange of ideas about the future of the College that is the very best part of any alumni reunion. Then … Marcia and I will be traveling East to visit our alumni clubs in Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston, and the number of former students who have indicated they will be attending each of these events is most heartening indeed. The same is true of other upcoming visits to Minneapolis, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle that are scheduled in November and December. Let me be very clear. Many alumni have fallen away from the College over the last several years, and the number of alumni who donated to Lewis & Clark in 2004 fell below 20 percent for the first time in recent history. We have some serious catching-up to do, since the institutions with which we compete routinely score well above 30 percent in this critical measure of institutional vitality. I am most sanguine about the prospects, however, and am determined to do whatever is necessary to bring our alumni back into active engagement in the life of the College.

These are exciting times at Lewis & Clark, and I am thrilled to be a part of this great institution.

Respectfully submitted,
Thomas J. Hochstettler
President