Category: news

A college village in Antioch’s future?

On a recent visit to Antioch College, architects from MacGlachlan, Cornelius and Filoni, who have designed for dozens of schools in the Northwest, noted the unique level of integration between the college and the village of Yellow Springs. According to Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt, the visitors said “they had never been to a college as closely tied to a village as we are.”

From Olive Kettering Library and Curl Gym to Rockford Chapel, the tennis courts and WYSO, the spaces and services that are shared between the college and village are both deep and historic. And the tradition has worked so well for so long, that Roosevelt for one sees value in perpetuating the overlap.

“We’re a small college and a small village, and there are a lot of things it makes sense to do together — it would be kooky not to share these between the college and the village.”

So while the college and the village collaborate to fund the new wellness center, the theater building and the Glen, there is one more horizon of integration the college has begun planning for. The issue of community housing on the college campus became public several months ago when the Village of Yellow Springs dug into the final stages of its zoning code revision. Antioch facilities manager Reggie Stratton appeared at several Village Council and zoning meetings stating the college’s need to include residential uses within its E-1 education zone.

The possibilities are wide open and the plans for housing won’t happen for another five to 10 years, Roosevelt said. But the idea, in its nascent conceptual phase, is that the college could in the future host an energy-efficient single and multi-family housing complex on its campus for faculty, staff, alumni and villagers who are as committed to the future of the college community as they are to their own.

The idea of creating an Antioch College village is the ultimate collaboration between the college and the surrounding community of residents. It’s also an opportunity for the college to have a continuing source of revenue and support. And though the target residents have yet to be defined, the community would ideally be composed of a mix of ages and include people who are looking specifically to become generative members of the community.

“We would offer something that’s the opposite of isolation, with healthy food, the Glen, wellness, the theater,” Roosevelt said. “This is offering people an opportunity to contribute and be part of something — because people have a yearning to be part of a community.”

Developing housing on campus would not be unprecedented at Antioch. According to Antioch archivist Scott Sanders, the college has a tradition of providing housing for its faculty and staff as a way of attracting the best minds to campus. The college established apartments for young faculty as early as the 19th century in Birch Hall and North and South halls. In the early 1920s, the college began buying homes within the Limestone, Phillips, West Davis and West Whiteman blocks for its faculty and staff. In the late 1930s, the college worked with Hugh Taylor Birch to purchase land for faculty homes south of campus as well, along Rice Road and President Street. The college also purchased homes in the village for student housing, such as the former Mills House (on Mills Lawn) and Greywood (now owned by Anthrotech).

But building the kind of campus community Roosevelt wants is different from the college’s previous models. And because it’s an undefined concept so far, “there is no language for it because it doesn’t exist yet,” he said last week. But Roosevelt knows what the community is not: a retirement community.

According to a 2007 article in the Journal on Active Aging, university-based retirement communities have been on the rise for 20 years and currently exist on over 60 campuses both small and large across the country, including Oberlin, Dartmouth, Penn State and Lasell College in Massachussetts. But those models stress the cultural advantages for seniors “in their golden years” and often include continuing care facilities, infantalizing their aging residents into passive, restful roles.

What Roosevelt envisions is something much more dynamic, for a wider range of lifestyles, including “next-chapter individuals” who are “at retirement age but have no interest in retiring,” he said.

This year is set to be a banner fundraising year for the college, which expects to bring in $21 million by the end of December. But that level of giving is hardly sustainable, Roosevelt said, and cannot be relied on to fill what the college anticipates will be a significant gap between costs and revenues. Once the college is functioning with 600 students, annual operating costs are expected to reach about $10–15 million, but anticipated revenues will likely only total $6–9 million. And judging by the challenges of many liberal arts colleges around the country, Antioch must prepare for a different financial model than it had in the past — one that involves a lot of resource sharing.

The location for campus housing has not been chosen, but the college does own vacant property all along the western side of Livermore Street at North, Center and South College streets, as well as the area behind the former student union building and along President Street. And if the union/Antioch Inn and the Sontag-Fels buildings are torn down in the next few years, there could be quite a bit more property available on the perimeter of the campus to use for housing that would benefit both communities.

Several organizations in Yellow Springs, including Friends Care Community and Home, Inc., have attempted to fill what they see as a need for senior housing in the village. Both Friends and Home, Inc. tried to develop a multi-family unit on the Barr property, and having run into road blocks, both entities are regrouping for projects elsewhere in the village; Friends on its Herman Street campus, Home, Inc. at an undisclosed location in the village.

While the college is sensitive to other housing efforts in the village, they haven’t forged any partnerships because they’re not sure just yet what they want to create. So while they focus on accreditation, building faculty and student numbers and renovating the core campus, the idea of housing has plenty of time to mature. Stratton knows that there is a lot to do before community housing comes to the fore.

“Our focus right now is accreditation because we need to get on solid financial ground for stability first,” Stratton said last week.

Antioch College fundraiser takes challenge

Brian Williams was recently named the new vice president of advancement at Antioch College. He begins next month. Williams, who has a law degree, has been a fundraiser at the Childrens Museum of Indianapolis and Knox College. He hopes to help Antioch reach a yet-to-be-determined fundraising goal of around $75 million over the next few years. (Submitted photo by Dennie Eagleson)

Brian Williams was recently named the new vice president of advancement at Antioch College. He begins next month. Williams, who has a law degree, has been a fundraiser at the Childrens Museum of Indianapolis and Knox College. He hopes to help Antioch reach a yet-to-be-determined fundraising goal of around $75 million over the next few years. (Submitted photo by Dennie Eagleson)

If fundraising is critical to Antioch College’s future, then a lot rests on the shoulders of Brian Williams, its new vice president of advancement.

Williams is tasked with helping the college reach a yet-to-be determined fundraising goal in the range of $75 million over the next few years, money Antioch would use for operations, campus improvements, student scholarships and faculty salaries. That sum is not insignificant for the recently reopened college, which also boasts a $44 million endowment. But after a banner fundraising year, strong admissions and solid alumni support, Williams is confident he can get the job done.

Williams starts next month. He takes a position held by interim vice president of advancement Reid Crawford, who stepped in when Steve Sturman departed in January for a job closer to home at Valparaiso University.

The 48-year-old Williams, who most recently worked for seven years as the VP of development at the Childrens Museum of Indianapolis, views Antioch’s re-emergence as an exciting challenge. Having spent most of his life and career in higher education, Williams said he jumped at the opportunity to return to the field.

“While there is a lot of risk in what Antioch is trying to do, the potential upside is so dramatic that it would be terrific fun and a privilege,” Williams said this week. “I’m hugely impressed that Antioch is doing what it’s doing. There’s no place that a person who is interested in working in higher education can go and do and be part of a liberal arts college re-emerging.”

A firm believer in the liberal arts model, Williams said Antioch needs to show that a liberal arts education is exactly what is needed in the world today, despite being a brand of education on the decline.

“When you talk about what skills employers are looking for and what skills liberal arts colleges instill in their students — effective communication, knowledge of multiple languages, the ability to discriminate among different ideas — those are things that liberal arts colleges do well,” Williams said. He added that an intimate setting and close relationship between faculty and students are only possible at liberal arts colleges.

Williams grew up in Crawfordsville, Ind., the home of Wabash College, where his father was a professor and chair of the religion department. Later he got degrees from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. (American studies), University of Wisconsin (history) and Indiana University (law) and was a senior lecturer in the law schools of both Northwestern University and Cornell.

In 2000, after eschewing practicing and teaching law for fundraising, Williams became the director of planned giving and later vice president of advancement at Knox College. Williams said he helped the struggling private liberal arts college with 800 students at the time navigate a difficult financial period marked by a small endowment and leadership transitions. At the Childrens Museum, where Williams has worked since 2006, he helped raised $8.5 million in annual combined revenue and frequently secured donations in the high seven figures.

Williams enjoys the work of fundraising, which, he said, can be rewarding.

“Done right — and that’s an important qualifier — it can be one of the most gratifying occupations because it’s all about if you’re passionate about the institution,” Williams said. “Really the role of the fundraising is to identify the opportunities that people want to invest in and show them how those investments pay off.”

At Antioch, Williams plans to focus on developing relationships with major donors and foundations and keeping alumni and other likely funders abreast of Antioch’s progress. He wants to “expand the net” of potential donors so the alumni don’t get “tapped out,” as their continuing support is vital to the college’s future, he said. And he plans to key in on the “small cadre of very loyal, very generous supporters,” as 90 percent of an organization’s funds are typically raised from just 10 percent of donors.

“The key strategy will just be very effective communication with alumni and other potential stakeholders about the work that’s going on at Antioch,” Williams said. “Fundraising is a little like dating, there is no shortcut.”

According to Crawford, a Washington D.C.-based consultant who has led Antioch’s fundraising efforts in 2013, the college raises about $2.5 million each year from its annual campaign and the rest from major donors. For its fiscal year ending June 30, the college raised $20 million — its best year yet. The Morgan Family Foundation was one major source, pledging $2.875 million over three years. In the two previous years the college raised $13 million and $9 million, according to tax documents.

Crawford attributes the banner fundraising year to growing confidence among donors that Antioch has strong senior leadership, excellent faculty, an active board and success at recruiting students. The recent purchase of the local public radio station (WYSO 91.3FM) and removal of reverter clauses that would have returned control of the college to Antioch University if it failed to be accredited — a $7 million deal that became official this week — are also causes for optimism among donors, Crawford said. The support of alumni, many of whom banded together to purchase the college from the university for $6 million in 2009, remains a critical source of dollars for Antioch, Crawford added.

“We want to show everyone that not only are we doing well in the present, but we have a future because we have the confidence of our friends and alumni, and they show that by giving their treasures,” Crawford said.

The loyalty of Antioch’s alumni has been “intense and immense,” Crawford said. According to a college announcement of the vice president of advancement vacancy, there are currently 17,000 alumni in the college’s network, with 21 chapters in the U.S. and one in Europe and alumni participation in the annual fund for fiscal year ending in 2012 was 26 percent.

Antioch is currently almost entirely reliant on fundraising, as student fees account for less than five percent of the college’s revenue, and fundraising will be key well into the future, according to President Mark Roosevelt in a presentation in May. The cost to operate the college was $12 million last year, a figure expected to grow to $15 million in two years. Even when Antioch’s students begin paying tuition, that money won’t come close to covering the college’s operating expenses and capital needs, Roosevelt said.

Williams added that fundraising is especially important to Antioch since it has a small endowment compared to its “sister colleges” Oberlin ($661 million), Wooster ($232 million) and Kenyon ($185 million).

“Fundraising at Antioch, certainly in the short term and even in the long term, will be crucially important,” Williams said.

Williams will live in the village with his wife, Catherine Lemmer, a law librarian who will join Williams after the fall semester. Their daughter, Cydney, will be attending New York University in the fall.

Antioch College begins renovation to theater and gym

Last week about 100 Antioch College alumni returned to campus to engage in the ongoing work, both creative and backbreaking, of rebuilding their school. This summer’s alumni work week focused especially on the demolition jobs needed to be done before the college can start this year’s slate of renovation planned for the Health and Wellness Center, the Theater building and the campus’s central geothermal heating and cooling plant. The chain-link fence that went up around Curl gym a few weeks ago is indicative of where the initial thrust lies.

According to Antioch Facilities Manager Reggie Stratton, the Wellness Center, to be located in Curl gym, is the biggest capital project to get under way this year. With plans for a new fitness center, lounge, locker rooms, two racketball courts and a new pool, the 44,000-square-foot center is expected to cost $7.2 million.

Along with the fitness amenities, the original Curl gym, built in 1928, will get its former windows restored along the upper perimeter of both the “east gym” and “west gym” — this time with double-paned insulated glass. The back wall of the natatorium will be constructed entirely of glass, with access to an outdoor patio to the south. The west gym will be refurbished, and the south gym will continue to be used as a multi-purpose performance and assembly space.

Also with new roofing, insulation and energy efficient lighting, the Wellness center aims to achieve some level of LEED certification, the second facility on campus (after North Hall) to do so, Stratton said.

The new Wellness Center is expected to be complete by June of next year.

A little ways east of the gym, the theater building is also getting some attention this year. The construction is happening ahead of schedule thanks to private donations of $350,000 and a commitment from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation. Though he couldn’t specify the amount of the grant which isn’t yet official, YSCF President Sterling Wiggins expressed enthusiasm for supporting the college.

“I believe the stronger the college is, the stronger the village is,” he said this week.

The theater, 16,000 square feet in total, is ready for an infrastructure overhaul, with new electric, plumbing and HVAC, as well as a partial roof repair on the north side. On the cosmetic end, the theater will also get new and expanded restrooms, new paint in the front hall, an LED theater lighting system, and all new seating on the existing risers in both the main theater and the smaller black box to the south. The theater seats a total of about 250 people, Stratton said. In addition, the college is rebuilding the theater’s dance floor using the wood from the floor of west gym. About a half a dozen alumni spent last week tearing out the old floor and meticulously removing the nails from each plank for the recycling effort.

All told, this phase of the theater building renovation is expected to cost $1.2 million, Stratton said. It is scheduled to start in earnest in July and be completed by Oct. 1, in time for the arrival of Antioch’s third class of students. Phase II for the theater will depend on financing and is projected to include the rest of the roof, all new windows, and a new set workshop, he said.

Both the gym and the theater, as well as the science building (currently in partial use for both the science and art programs) are to be heated and cooled by the central and primary geothermal plant, another major construction/renovation project slated for this year. The geothermal wellfield consists of 150 wells each 300 feet deep and will be located on the campus golf course. The system uses the steady temperature of the ground to heat and cool water whose energy is then converted to either the heating or cooling needs of campus facilities. The converters, including heat pumps, chillers and heat exchangers, will be located in the maintenance and engineering building just south of the library.

When the geothermal project starts in September, maintenance staff will relocate to an existing structure south of the Kettering building, as the maintenance building itself will also benefit from a new roof, windows and restrooms.

The cost of the geothermal system and trenching to the first three buildings is expected to cost around $4.2 million. That phase should be completed by April 2014. (In the meantime, the theater building, which will be up and running this fall, will be heated with a rented gas-fire unit until it can be connected to the central plant.) Phase II of the geothermal system, again dependent on the availability of funds, will include serving the heating and cooling needs of South Hall, McGregor and possibly the library, Stratton said, by trenching and laying pipeline from the central plant to those buildings.

The Wellness Center and the theater building constitute the third and fourth renovation projects since the college reopened in 2011. Last year the college put $3.6 million into reburbishing some of the science building laboratories and classrooms, and $5.7 million into a complete renovation of North Hall dorm and cafeteria, with a secondary geothermal heating system. Phase II of the science building is projected to cost an estimated $7.4 million and will accommodate both the science and the art departments for the foreseeable future, Stratton said.

“We want to get that done in the next few years in order to allow the arts program to grow,” he said.

In terms of dorm space on campus, Antioch anticipates that Birch Hall and North Hall have enough space for the first four classes, with Case Commons (behind the Coretta Scott King Center) available for additional needs. By 2017, the college expects to have one more dorm online, perhaps either a renovated Spalt dorm or a new building on the horseshoe where Spalt now stands.

Antioch College names new VP for advancement – Fairborn Daily Herald

Antioch College names new VP for advancement
Fairborn Daily Herald
Williams will be joining the Antioch College staff from The Children's Museum of Indianapolis in Indiana, where he has been the vice president of development since May 2006. During his tenure, he managed the museum's resource development program and …

Dayton Daily News – Q&A: ANTIOCH PRESIDENT MARK ROOSEVELT

http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/news/opinion/we-are-an-unusual-school-in-an-unusual-time-antioc/nX8GX/

Q&A: ANTIOCH PRESIDENT MARK ROOSEVELT

‘We are an unusual school in an unusual time,’ Antioch leader says

Liberal arts students learn in the classroom and through work experience

Posted: 12:05 a.m. Sunday, June 2, 2013

By Ron Rollins – Associate Editor

There’s an unusual — historic, even — higher-education story happening right now in southwest Ohio.

In the quiet, pretty Greene County village of Yellow Springs, a dedicated group of teachers and staff, and a brave group of students are working hard to bring back to life a college that had died. Long-running financial problems led to the closing of Antioch College in 2007. The school reopened in 2011, and leading the charge back to a healthier future is President Mark Roosevelt.

Harvard-educated, the great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, a former Massachusetts state legislator and 1994 gubernatorial candidate there, he came to Antioch after the very tough job of running the Pittsburgh public schools, where he got local credit for turning around a troubled district.

Roosevelt’s goal for Antioch is not just a turnaround, but also a leap into the future that helps find successful new ways for liberal-arts education to shake off the current criticism that it is impractical and not focused enough on careers and jobs for graduates. Roosevelt is proud of Antioch’s famed co-op program, which puts students in four quarters of intensive work environments that are directly tied to their studies, and thinks it can serve as a model.

Both charismatic and thoughtful, Roosevelt speaks just as passionately about his hero, Abraham Lincoln, as he does about the need for educational reforms, and the role he hopes Antioch will play in the cultural life of the region. We caught up with him in his McGregor Hall office last week, where he can look out upon a campus that is still recovering from years of neglect, but which today sports new signage, landscaping and a smart crop of new undergrads. Today we present an edited, condensed recap of our wide-ranging conversation.

Q: Not many people can claim to have a job that is truly unique.

A: How do you mean?

Q: As far as we’re aware, you’re the only person in the country in charge of bringing back a college that had died.

A: If you put it in those terms, I suppose you’re right. It feels different from when I started — I’ve been here two and a half years now — but you’ve hit on the essential contradiction of this job: We’re both a startup, and a 162-year-old institution. That is managerially complex.

Q: How so?

A: Well, we are not the college that was closed, but there are many aspects of our programs that are inherited directly from that college. Much of the ethos is inherited, and then some is new. So the fundamental question is, how can you both honor the past and also honor the opportunity of rethinking what a liberal arts college should be, how it can be funded, structured, how the curriculum can be designed and delivered? We’re trying to take the best of the past — the college’s co-op program that puts students in work environments, for example. We still believe the separation of work and academics is artificial. How do we both honor that and build on it, so that we’re looking at experiential learning in a new way? That is the heart of what is exciting about the enterprise.

Q: What sort of image would you like for the new Antioch to project?

A: Rigorous. Cutting edge. Demanding curriculum. A global focus, with heavy emphasis on foreign language acquisition. And we’re attempting in various ways to get ahead of the curve in terms of addressing the crisis in higher education and liberal arts education — how do we deliver a very high-end product at a fairly modest cost. It’s not easy. If it were, a lot of folks would have done it already. We have some advantages here. In some ways, the campus having been let go, physically, as badly as it had, is kind of an opportunity. We will be a very small, very tight, very efficient plant at the end, and that will help us in the long run. The trustees, too, decided that the campus will be heated and cooled by geothermal and solar power, and while there are some initial startup costs, that will save about $400,000 a year when we’re up and running.

Q: What attracted you to the job?

A: Exactly what we’re talking about. Who else has a chance to really think deeply about how liberal arts education shall be organized? That’s the up side. The down side is the money pressure. And there’s a lot of that.

Q: Antioch had a fairly long history of financial problems, right? I once heard someone say the school relished being poor.

A: Yes, and I think that contributed to what finally happened. I don’t believe a culture of scarcity or poverty is beneficial in any sense. It’s not at all benign, and it has many corrosive effects. So, there comes another balance — we want to be careful with other people’s dollars, because we exist on goodwill and donations; how to embrace frugality, but not poverty?

Q: How many faculty and students?

A: We’re in the midst of hiring nine new faculty, which will put us at 24 in the fall. We have about 200 students.

Q: What’s the goal?

A: Good question, and we’re not sure. We intend to remain a very small liberal arts college, so we could be as small as 800 or as large as 1,200, which would take us quite a while. Until we get our accreditation, which will be a seminal moment for the institution, students are enrolled tuition-free. We’ve sought students who can put Antioch back on the map and move us to a place of real quality. The free tuition was a critical step.

Q: Characterize the sort of students you’ve attracted.

A: I’d say they’re more risk-embracive. We’ve placed a great emphasis on grit. Being smart only gets you so far; you have to be able to apply it. So, they’re slightly older than other students, and probably more idealistic. Their self-identification is that they want to do something with their lives that pushes the box a little bit. They’re probably more questioning than other students. Really, the whole thing about Antioch is not to have a typical student, but I think those qualities are all there in ours.

Q: Why are they older?

A: Well, last year we had 3,000 applications for 75 openings, which made us the most selective college in America. Most schools would only look at the ACT and SAT scores, and put them in files. We look for facets of their life story that tell us something about them and what they will bring to the campus. So many of them have taken time off to do something interesting, or maybe they’ve struggled a bit, and that makes them a little older when they get to Antioch.

Q: What sort of struggles?

A: An interesting thing you find when you say that you’re looking for grit is the way people can evidence it. I don’t mean to be Supreme Court-ish about it, but it’s a lot like what Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography — that you know it when you see it. With some applications, it flies off the page right into your face. That someone faced a particular challenge, and overcame it. For instance, in our culture today, it’s it’s one thing now to be openly gay. But say that you were the person who organized the first gay/straight student alliance in Utah? That could be grit.

Q: True story?

A: I’m changing the facts slightly to respect privacy, but that does more or less fit the circumstance of one of our students. And really, an emphasis on grit is interesting, because it raises a lot of intriguing questions about privilege — because as parents, we generally try to protect our children from having opportunities to display grit, right? We are an unusual school in an unusual time, so when a student complains to me that there is something we don’t have here that they would like to see, I usually turn it back to them and say: OK, make it happen. That’s not your typical college experience.

Q: What sort of culture are you trying to create?

A: Open-minded. Big-time open-minded. In my welcome to students, I talk about what the liberal arts should do for you — among them, that if one of them sits here for four years and ends up thinking the same things as before they arrived, then they have failed. I think a liberal arts education should shake zealotry; it should get you to have a little doubt infusion, which is a healthy thing. It should give you the ability to see nuance, and understand that most things are not black and white, and the ability to talk across differences. In my position, I will refer to the famous quote from Horace Mann, our first president, that’s the Antioch motto: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” I do my best to honor it, but I like a quote from Sam Adams that I think is a little less sharp-elbowed: “There are two kinds of people in the world — those who are committed, and those who live off the commitment of others.” We definitely want our students to be the former.

Q: You’ve mentioned the state of liberal arts education nationally. How did it end up where it is?

A: I have a different perspective on it since I came from K-12 education, and K-12 has been going through the last 30 years what higher education is going through now — people questioning outcomes, and having to decide, How open to change am I? Incredible scrutiny tends to make most people overwhelmingly defensive, where people will say, It’s hard to quantify what we do, you can’t apply those standards to it. I think there are things in liberal arts education that are good, and really are hard to quantify. But there are also quantifiable problems in higher education that haven’t been dealt with — affordability, retention rates, and how adept colleges are at putting together support systems for the students that we know are likely to struggle, such as first-generation college students, or students of color.

Everybody is resistant to change forced from outside. But this isn’t just happening in our business. I’ve got friends in publishing, the legal industry and others who are experiencing this. It’s that higher education, like K-12, is more of a public process. I think we need to be very open to these discussions, and very accepting that there may be better ways to do business. But at our core, at Antioch we are a residential, small liberal-arts college experience, and one, some things associated with that are inherently expensive, and two, many of those things are also inherently valuable and worth defending. For example, it’s hard to quantify all the good things a student gets from peer interactions while living on a campus for four years, or the faculty interactions, or the learning that happens from those, that is life-enhancing but not directly tied to employability. Exposure to the world of music, and literature, and art, and conversation and thought that are all deeply enriching and make you the person you become.

Q: Judging from your office decor and books, you’re a big Abraham Lincoln fan. What do you get from him that helps your work?

A: Wow. I almost feel shy talking about it, not wanting to sound presumptuous. I derive great sustenance from the life of Lincoln, and I love that I can spend time in his company when I read the things he wrote, which I do often. He was such a wonderful writer. There’s that old cliched question of who, from anybody in history, you’d want to have dinner with, and he would overwhelmingly be my choice. His ability to do tough things — and he was asked to do many tough things — but to do them with as much gentleness and kindness as could be mustered, and yet firmness when he had to be firm — I think he got as much done with what he was given as is humanly possible. He also suffered enormously, and yet he just gave and gave and gave of himself to people, and he continues to give to this day to those of us who choose to dig in and listen to him.

Q: Of course, you have connections to another president. Talk a little about the family legacy.

A: I’ve not ever particularly enjoyed talking about it. The reason is that I prefer for people to take me for what I am, and not have it color people’s impression of me. But it also makes me proud to be part of a certain political heritage.

Q: Well, he was a great president.

A: He was a complicated man. Obviously, I’ve studied him and spent time coming to terms with that. The only member of his immediate family I knew was Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and I had very mixed feelings about her. She had a very tart tongue and disparaged a lot of people, including and especially Eleanor Roosevelt, who I don’t think of as a person who deserved to be disparaged.

Q: Yellow Springs suffered when the college closed. What do you want the town-gown relationship to be?

A: For us to be more integrated with our community than any other college in the country. Two things happening now illustrate that — we’ve developing our old gymasium and turning it into a community asset, sharing it with the town. We’re also renovating our old theater, with contributions from the village, and it will be open to the village. There are lots of things that could play out — energy issues, recycling, food service — could we someday work with the Yellow Springs schools on food service? Who knows? We’re looking for all sorts of ways for this college and this fascinating village to work together. We have a radio station, WYSO, an art gallery, we own Glen Helen, we have a little chapel, the riding center, the Antioch Review — it’s a very unusual collection of assets for a small liberal arts college, and they lend themselves to interaction with the community.

Q: What’s your personal role in the community?

A: This isn’t a big-man-on-campus kind of place. My main thing is, let’s work together, in the broadest sense. Sure, there are some dissident factions, but look — I’m 57, and I’m not into fighting. My attitude is, people can work things out. There’s so much fun stuff to do, even though it’ll be a lot of work.

Q: So, what do you think higher education looks like in the future?

A: Many, many different variations of offerings. Where I think we will succeed is to have a distinctive niche where we integrate classroom and experiential learning. We never tout it, but when you graduate from Antioch, you know how to respond to an alarm clock, you have a full resume, you know the habits of work. So what we do does indeed address some of the criticism in society that the liberal arts are cut off from the workings of business and from American life. We are looking to be a place with a distinctive contribution to our very carefully created niche.

Q: Looking ahead, what are your challenges and advantages?

A: Almost all the challenges are monetary. We have to understand that it is self-indulgent to talk about things that we have no money to support. Now, this year, incredibly, we will hit a nearly $21 million budget, by far our best year. I think people are regaining faith and are seeing things that make them want to be supportive. The alumni will hit close to 30 percent participation in fundraising this year. Those are pretty substantial numbers, but that’s still where the challenge lies. Our advantages? The unique opportunity to start this thing fresh.