Dear Students: To those who are returning for spring semester 2005, welcome back. To those new to Guilford College, welcome. I appreciate the opportunity that the editors of The Guilfordian have provided me to let you know some of what’s going on. I spent the break away – in my case with family in the Philadelphia suburbs and then in Maine where I really missed the balmy temperatures that North Carolina had – so like many of you I am getting my head back in gear for another semester. This is a special semester for me because I am back in the classroom teaching Political Science 204.
Initial implementation has begun of our exciting new strategic plan that the Board of Trustees approved last October 2004. Teams of faculty, staff, and students are working on “how to” questions related to each of the five major priorities of the plan:

1. Practical liberal arts education as exemplified by principled problem solving and “The Guilford Challenge” that aims to help students be intentional about connecting their professional and vocational goals with their academic and co-curricular programs;

2. Expanding our academic community by increasing enrollment very gradually from 2,500 this fall to 3,300 in 2010 while constraining average class size and student/teacher ratios, developing new academic alliances with other colleges and universities, and addressing the needs of a wide range of students through the “Lifetime of Learning” initiative. This projected rate of growth over the next five years (32%) is much lower than the growth we have already experienced in the last four years (100%);

3. Strengthening our Quaker heritage and commitment to diversity and anti-racism;

4. Ensuring stewardship and accountability by balancing the budget, increasing our financial resources, and attending to the compensation needs of faculty and staff and the maintenance and functionality of our facilities; and

5. Improving our academic community by enhancing staff and student satisfaction and other actions.

There will be many opportunities, via the Community Senate and CCE Student Government Association, for students to provide input to the plan’s implementation. Woody Allen once remarked that 80% of success consists in “showing up.”

The same lesson applies to student involvement in college governance. Get involved. Show up at meetings and forums and give your views. Do not show up and lose your right to complain later. Last week, I invited ten students to dine with me at Ragsdale House as part of a continuing effort to solicit feedback about how the president and the College are doing. I asked them to RSVP as soon as possible. The meal was cancelled when only two of the students bothered to respond that they were coming (or not coming). What would Woody Allen have said about that?
Physical changes have occurred since you left such as new walkways and landscaping near Frank Family Science Center and kiosks with room for announcements and campus maps. The most obvious project is the start of construction on the new student residence apartments in between the existing apartments on one end and Milner hall and Ragsdale House where I live on the other. We still expect the apartments, and the community center, to be completed in time for fall semester 2005. To focus the work and noise when students (and the president!) are least likely to be in their rooms, construction will occur mostly from 8:00 am – Dark, Monday – Saturday.
The wood that was cleared from the site will be milled into lumber which will be used for a variety of projects around campus as needed. In addition, the smaller diameter trees have been chopped up for firewood for the art department kiln and for future student events.
With December graduations, academic and conduct withdrawals, and new students, enrollment this spring (2500 across the traditional, CCE, and Early College programs) will be about the same as the fall. At over 1,700 so far, applications for the new traditional first year class that will enter next fall are running about 10% to date over last year and 75% over two years ago.
If these trends persist, the percentage of applicants we admit will probably drop–and selectivity improved–given more applications and a lower targeted enrollment next fall of 380 traditional students compared to the 440 that actually enrolled last fall.
Of course, there have been many other achievements in personnel and programs, and challenges, but these are the events that come most readily to mind within the constraints of my aging memory and The Guilfordian’s word limit. This will be the first new semester at Guilford College in almost seventy years without Charlie Hendricks among us but his spirit and memory remain.
Have a great semester. May you have, as we say in New England, fair skies and following winds on this next stage in your educational journey.

Sincerely,

Kent John Chabotar
President and Professor of Political Science
Guilford College