A willingness to change and try new things has transformed Chatham University from a struggling 500-student liberal arts undergraduate women's college into a comprehensive, financially sound, highly ranked university with more than 2,100 students.
Under the leadership of President Esther Barazzone, Chatham has grown and prospered by embracing change, anticipating what students will need in the future and adapting to changing circumstances.
The Tribune-Review's recent article on Chatham ignores the truth of Chatham's current circumstances and accomplishments. Instead, it takes as “fact” the opinions of a few former employees.
It is simply not true, for example, that the board's recent decision on coeducation had anything to do with “faltering finances and high turnover among senior staff.” The decision was based on the board's understanding that offering women-only undergraduate education was financially unsustainable.
Chatham's financial situation is quite sound. Our cash operations have been in the black for the last several years. Chatham has a positive financial outlook and investment-grade bond rating. The primary reason Chatham's “expenses outstripped revenue in three of the past six years” is because Chatham does not fund depreciation.
Similarly, the coed decision had nothing to do with staff turnover. As the article admits, the average tenure among senior staff at Chatham (6 years) is in line with the national average (6.1 years). The two most recent additions to the senior leadership team have been at Chatham 18 and 33 years, respectively.
We understand that change is hard for some people to accept. But the demand for change is accelerating, creating opportunities for new ways of doing things and rewarding institutions that adapt to the times.
The higher education sector must change its old way of doing things (e.g., continuing under-enrolled programs, not holding faculty and staff accountable for performance, creating systems in which students take far too long to complete degrees). If institutions do not change, then as recently predicted by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, as many as half of the more than 4,000 universities and colleges in the U.S. may fail in the next 15 years.
Chatham has changed with the times and has been rewarded and recognized for doing so. We have been recognized as one of the top regional universities in the Northeast. We have won national and international recognition and support for our new sustainability initiatives. The quality of our faculty, students and programs is very high. These are the stories that should be told about change at Chatham.
Each of the authors served as chair of Chatham's Board of Trustees during Dr. Barazzone's presidency.
Editor's note: On July 3, Standard & Poor's Rating Services issued a negative outlook on a new BBB-rated $18 million bond issue for Chatham University.
“The negative outlook reflects our view of Chatham's transformational risk over the next few years, as the university's undergraduate program transitions from single-sex to co-educational starting in fall 2015. According to management, the school has been strategic in reaching this decision, given recent enrollment pressures at the undergraduate college and continued operating deficits on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis, to ensure long-term sustainability for the institution,” the rating agency said.
