Tag: From the Print

Antioch adds new leaders

Ron Napal is the new interim director of advancement for Antioch College.

Ron Napal is the new interim director of advancement for Antioch College.

Along with incoming president Mark Roosevelt, who began his tenure January 1, Antioch College recently announced three other new leaders at the revived college.

Ron Napal, a 1966 Antioch College graduate with a long history of fundraising and public relations experience, last week began his position as interim director of advancement. He will continue in this position until June, as the college seeks a permanent leader of the advancement office. In an interview this week, Napal said he is not a candidate for the permanent position.

Retired last year after 20 years with United Cerebral Palsy of New York City, Napal came back to work because “I’m committed to the success of the newly independent Antioch,” he said.

Napal feels commited to his alma mater, he said, because “Antioch transformed my life,” when he was a young man. “It trained me to be an entrepreneur before I knew the word, trained me to be flexible, a problem solver.”

After graduation, Napal went on to found his first business, an arts management firm, at the age of 27. After that, he founded a second company, a niche marketing and public relations firm. Later Napal went on to serve as vice-president and chief development officer for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, where in four years he oversaw growth in revenues from $17.5 million to $34 million annually, followed by his work with the United Cerebral Palsy organization, where he served in a variety of positions, including chief development officer, director for corporate development and special advisor to the CEO and board of directors.

In his new position as interim director of advancement at Antioch College, Napal will oversee a staff of 10 employees who are engaged in fundraising and alumni relations. His specific goal is to assure that the general fundraising campaign, with a goal of $2.2 million, is concluded successfully by the end of the fiscal year in June, along with working on the ongoing capital campaign goal of raising $50 million in five years. So far, the college has raised $22 million, he said.

Born and raised in New York City, Napal will continue his residency there, but plans to be on campus three days a week when not on fundraising trips.

His lifelong work in nonprofits was also informed by his Antioch College experience, Napal said, stating that, “I take Horace Mann’s mandate very seriously.”

Raised in a traditional middle-class home, Napal retained the values he was raised with when he came to Antioch but his experience here “opened up another world to me, gave me a broader social palette.”

New board members

The college also announced last week that David Goodman and Gregory Avis will join the college’s pro tem board. The new members will join other board members at a meeting on campus this weekend, Jan. 21–23. Open sessions of the board will begin at 1:30 on Saturday, Jan. 22, in Herndon Gallery.

“David Goodman and Greg Avis will bring to the work of rebuilding Antioch College their skills, their experience and their wisdom,” according to Board Vice-chair Francis Horowitz in a press statement last week. “We are fortunate to have their commitment to our common purposes.”

Goodman, a 1969 graduate of the college, was a lead negotiator, along with alumnus Eric Bates, of the college alumni’s first attempt to gain independence from Antioch University. During the two years after the university announced in June 2007 that the college would close the following year, alumni mounted several intensive efforts to save the college. Those efforts were successful in September 2009, when the college became independent from Antioch University after more than 20 years in the university system, and became once again a free-standing liberal arts school.

Goodman is a principal of North Arrows LLC, which specializes in power and energy investments. He is also a founding partner and principal of e-Solar Properties LLC. In 1980 he founded United American Energy Corporation, and led it up to its sale in 2003. He is also president of the Andrew Goodman Foundation for Human Dignity and Civil Rights, a nonprofit that honors his brother Andrew, who, with James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, was murdered in 1964 while pursuing voter registraton for African Americans in Mississippi.

After graduating from Antioch, Goodman received an MBA from Stanford University. He has written and lectured on civil rights, alternative fuels and green building and general business matters in his areas of expertise.

Avis is the first member of the college’s governing board who is not a graduate of the college. He co-founded Summit Partners in 1984, and has worked as a director of many public and private companies, including Digital Link Corporation, IMPAC Medical Systems, Integrated Systems RightNow Technologies and TGV Software. He holds a bachelors in political economy from Williams College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is currently chair of the Williams College Board of Trustees.

Roosevelt ready to lead, and sink roots into community

To some of Mark Roosevelt’s colleagues, leaving a job as superintendent of the 30,000-pupil Pittsburgh school district to lead a reopened small-town college hoping for 25 students next fall did not seem wise. But Roosevelt said he could not pass up the chance to become the first president of a revived Antioch College. Even though he has never been a college administrator, Roosevelt has focused much of his career on reforming education, which he sees as one of America’s greatest failures, and said he believes he has the skills to lead Antioch through this critical period.

“I’ve been a non-traditional applicant for every job I’ve applied for,” Roosevelt said in an interview last week. Particularly attractive about the post at Antioch was “an incredible history and opportunity to re-think the role of faculty, role of co-op and basic questions around foundational curriculum.”

“It’s not about the numbers [of students],” Roosevelt said. “It’s the ideas that help the college come to life, grow and prosper.”

The allure of small town life and the vibrant arts and culture of Yellow Springs also drew Roosevelt to the position, which he begins Saturday. Having grown up in Washington, D.C. and living most of his life in Boston, Roosevelt, 55, along with his wife, Dorothy, 44, wanted a close-knit community in which to raise their four-year-old daughter, Juliana.

Yellow Springs had all of the amenities the couple was looking for — arts, music, good coffee, good food and lots of recreation — and they felt the potential to develop roots in the community. Plus, Dorothy Roosevelt, a former yoga instructor, has an interest in wellness, which also makes Yellow Springs a good fit. The couple recently bought a home on Hyde Road.

Though Mark Roosevelt plans to take in his share of local chamber music and hit the tennis courts (he is an avid tennis player), his focus has been firmly on the college since arriving Dec. 9. And though he said he does not believe the vision for the college should come from him alone, Roosevelt is already full of ideas for Antioch’s rebirth.

“I don’t think it’s an institution where one person articulates the vision,” he said, adding that he will work with board and faculty to build on Antioch’s strengths, like its co-op program, and address its weaknesses, such as student retention, which nationally is only around 50 percent and has historically been a problem at the college. To keep students, Roosevelt is starting to look at ways to better mentor students with academic and co-op advising.

“We make several transitions in life harder than they need to be,” Roosevelt said. “Antioch is uniquely positioned to speak to a better transition between high school to college and college to work.”

Roosevelt also brings a self-described obsession with American history to his new job, having recently taught classes on the historical roots of public discourse at Carnegie Mellon University and Brandeis University. He said he hopes that all Antioch students graduate with an historical understanding of the different viewpoints in this nation, as well as what it means to be an American. Roosevelt admits to being a “total Lincoln fanatic,” who has already adorned his South Hall office with five portraits of the Civil War president.

After serving five years as superintendent in Pittsburgh, where he spearheaded an unprecedented five-year contract with the teacher’s union incorporating performance-based pay and raised millions for college scholarships for students, Roosevelt said he is prepared again to work to bring different groups together for the best interest of students. Roosevelt said he will continue a student-centered approach, along with a focus on workforce morale, in addition to helping Antioch raise the millions of dollars needed to achieve a new vision.

“The college has a history of poverty, which is a morale- and opportunity-depleter,” he said. “This is not an insignificant challenge.”

Educational reform has been Roosevelt’s driving force since he guided passage of an education reform bill through the Massachusetts state legislature in 1993 as chair of the House Education Committee. He said he views education failures as one of America’s massive systemic challenges that has had implications for the nation’s economic competitiveness.

Dorothy Roosevelt also has a passion for education, having worked at Project Zero, an educational research group at Harvard University, where Mark Roosevelt received his bachelors and law degrees. The couple met 10 years ago when Roosevelt’s niece, who was taking a yoga class with Dorothy, introduced them.

Their daughter, Juliana, who was adopted from Guatemala, will attend preschool at the Antioch School, Roosevelt said. He also has a 25-year-old adopted son, Matthew, from a previous marriage.

For Roosevelt, his tenure at Antioch is a new opportunity to pursue educational reform, and his time in Yellow Springs is a chance for small-town life.

“We’re thrilled to be here,” he said of Yellow Springs. “We’re very much looking forward to sinking roots down and becoming part of the community.”

Antioch’s ‘white knight’ moves

Departing Antioch College Interim President Matthew Derr never tired or wavered in his successful three-year effort to save his alma mater. Now Derr makes way for incoming president Mark Roosevelt, who starts on Jan. 1.

“I am more invigorated by this today than I ever was — I have enjoyed this,” he said in an interview last week. “I’ve viewed my job as setting the platform for what will come next — now it’s up to Mark.”

At a college reception for Derr last week, college staff praised him for his patience, unswerving leadership and unflagging optimism in leading the revived institution in its first year as an independent college.

“It was his compassion to listen to all sides and make creative informed decisions,” that made Derr successful, according to Antioch’s chief financial officer Tom Brookey. “And he had a great vision for the college.”

Derr was also honored for his role in alumni negotiations to purchase the college from Antioch University, which culminated in a ceremony last fall in which Derr was handed the keys to the college.

To Derr, that moment was the most defining of his time at Antioch. Despite taking place in the fall, Derr remembers the event, which followed months of tense, behind-the-scenes negotiations, as being like a bright, sunny spring day.

“That was the key moment — it felt like a new and very exciting time,” Derr said.

Derr will continue to help Antioch gain accreditation and develop fundraising strategies from his new position at the Great Lakes College Association in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he will begin a two-year visiting fellowship. He will also apply to a higher education PhD program at the University of Michigan. But, he said, he is grateful for what was an unusual opportunity to develop a compelling educational model after the college was shut down by Antioch University in 2008.

“I would’ve avoided at all cost the calamity but [the closure] provided an unusual opportunity — institutions don’t get that opportunity,” Derr said. “I don’t know if what I’ll do in my professional life will be as exciting.”

In October, Derr received the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s Executive Leadership Award, given annually to an education executive in the six-state district for his efforts saving the college from permanent closure and modeling outstanding advancement work, according to award administrator Teresa Exline in a statement.

Derr started working for the college in summer 2007 after he sent an e-mail to the alumni board offering to help with fundraising. With a fitting background in education and advancement, Derr began as a volunteer before leaving his job as vice-president of advancement at the Boston Conservatory to work full-time at the college, first as chief transition officer and later as interim president, a position he held for 12 months. In that time, the college went from having no electricity or gas service to over 45 employees, millions of dollars in donations and a plan to reopen to students next fall.

It was his persistence, patience, diplomacy and passion for the Antioch model, Derr said, which helped him successfully negotiate the alumni’s purchase of the college and, over the last year, begin to rebuild the college’s programs, curriculum and campus.

“One thing that proved to be important was the willingness to make difficult choices and the patience to see the outcome,” Derr said. “I have seen myself as a facilitator to negotiate and create the prospect for a future we can all be proud of.”

At the reception, held last Thursday at Herndon Gallery in South Hall, Derr was commended by college staff for everything from his e-mail responsiveness and bowties to his hands-on style and loyalty to his employees.

“He knew this place like the back of his hand,” said communication director Gariot Louima. “It wasn’t just a business to him — it was a place of love and his employees felt that.”

“He was loyal to the employees,” Brookey said. “He has a very caring attitude and he isn’t a reactionary person —he would think before he responded.”

College staff and community supporters also sang a version of the alma mater lauding Derr —“You fought the fight with strength forthright/Some call you Antioch’s white knight.”

Having secured the campus and solidified alumni support, Derr said he is leaving Roosevelt in a good position to continue the college’s revival. Derr is not just hopeful that the college’s reopening will be successful, but certain. Derr also said he looks forward to Roosevelt’s tenure as president.

“I feel good about handing off the presidency,” Derr said. “Mark is intense, smart, witty and I genuinely like him. I’m excited as an alum for him to represent the college.”

As he prepares for the next stage in his career, Derr reflected on his most prized accomplishment as the simple fact that the college continues to survive.

“I’m most proud of the fact that we’re here,” he said. “In any other context that would be glib, but that we were able to move the institution forward speaks to the skill and motivation of the Antioch community.”

A community reception honoring Derr will be in January or February.

Alum brings innovative theater

The Faux-Real Theatre Company hosts the “Oedipus Rex” theater workshop from Friday, Aug. 13 through Thursday, Aug. 19. Mask by Linda White; Jamie Carrillo and William Runnels (in mask).

As an Antioch student in the mid-1980s, Mark Greenfield staged theater productions on the college golf course, inside the mail room, and during board of trustees’ meetings. Now Greenfield returns to Yellow Springs to teach a workshop on producing theater in non-traditional and outdoor settings and put on Oedipus Rex in the Antioch amphitheater.

Organized in collaboration with Antioch College and Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute, the week-long workshop, “Make Theatre Anywhere,” runs from 6 to 8 nightly starting Friday, Aug. 13, and ending Thursday, Aug. 19.

Greenfield and other workshop presenters will teach how to use movement and vocal techniques, mask work, chorus involvement, group improvisation methods and stage choreography in an outdoor setting for $35 for the entire week or $7 for each individual night.

Having directed plays in public parks, abandoned buildings and boats, the New York City director is an expert in putting on shows in unexpected places.

“Part of what I have to offer is to show people how, if you have an idea and you have the people, you can find a place to make [theater] happen — and you don’t need a lot of funding to do it,” Greenfield said of the workshop, which is open to theater artists of all ages and experiences levels. “For people who have a lot of theater experience but they’ve done it in a traditional environment — it can expand their milieu in terms of where theater can happen and what it can be.”

Workshop participants will create their own 15-minute short play, which will be performed in conjunction with the staging of Oedipus Rex by Greenfield’s production company, Faux-Real Theatre, on Aug. 20, Aug. 21 and Aug. 22 at the Antioch amphitheater.

Rehearsals for the all-male production of the Sophocles classic start Aug. 13. Six parts will be cast to local actors, who will join eight New York City-based actors of the Faux-Real Theatre Company.

“We wanted to do a traditional play and apply our untraditional aesthetic,” Greenfield said of his vision for Oedipus Rex, which uses masks, ecstatic dancing and simultaneous action in an outdoor setting. The fantastical, transcendent experience Greenfield aims to create incorporates many elements of traditional Greek theater.

“We say we do it as Sophocles intended,” Greenfield said.

Greenfield came up with the idea when attending an Antioch alumni event in New York City while he was searching for an outdoor amphitheater for his Oedipus Rex production.

“It struck me that it would be nice to have something going on in the Antioch amphitheater in looking to revitalize the college,” he said.

Greenfield decided to offer the workshop as a way to give back to a college and community that helped launch his theater career.

“I wanted to do something that really involved both the town and the college,” Greenfield said. “I was very close with community members. For me, the whole Antioch experience was a Yellow Springs experience.”

He also wanted to provide local actors the opportunity to partake in the production.

“I know there is a very active, artistic community [in Yellow Springs] so I thought it would be great to include them,” he said.

Antioch College Interim President Matthew Derr hailed the cooperative effort, remembering Greenfield, his Antioch classmate, as a “real creative force as a student.”

“It’s an interesting collaboration for the college to sponsor something and work with such an innovative company from out-of-town as well as this great local resource in the village,” Derr said.

Nonstop’s participation in the workshop and production includes assisting with marketing and logistics as well as several of the artistic components of the show.

“We’re interested in working collaboratively with the college in areas we can lend our expertise,” said Michael Casselli, a Nonstop executive collective member and performance artist who will help Greenfield, his former Antioch classmate, with the workshop and the set design for the Oedipus Rex production.

“We can work with each other in mutually supportive ways,” Casselli said of the collaboration between Nonstop and the college. “We don’t want to be in competition with each other, so if we can assist or support relationships between us, it would be beneficial to everyone involved.”

Greenfield has decided that a portion of the production and workshop’s proceeds will go to support Nonstop and to Antioch.

“I got so much in my time at Antioch as a person and everything I’ve done afterward is because of what I learned while I was there,” Greenfield said.

To audition for the production or register for the workshop, contact Greenfield at fauxrealtheatre@aol.com or at 917-687-4998. For general information, contact Jill Becker of Nonstop at jillbecker1@gmail.com or 937-767-2646.