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Welcoming you on this rainy afternoon.
Amherst is beautiful, regardless of the weather.
But it's a pity that it has to be regardless of the weather
today.
My name is Paula Roush, and I'm one of the members
of the Board of Trustees.
I am just about to rotate off of the board after 12 years.
And I want to spend a couple of minutes talking
about what the board does.
It's as important what we don't do as what we do do.
But we are really the stewards of the institution
that each of us loves.
I would say this is the best unpaid job I've ever had.
And our board is an unusual board.
For the people that serve on many boards, the Amherst board,
and others, very often they will say
this is by far the best board that they have ever served on.
There is a shared passion about the college.
I don't believe any of you would be back here if you didn't
share that passion with us.
And it's a diverse group of people
with very different skills.
And we are called upon to undertake
a variety of special projects, as well
as the work of the board.
And it's, kind of, the basics.
We need to engage fully in the mission of the college,
to support the values of the college.
Part of it is to show up and be prepared.
When I spoke with [? Giday, ?] who was the second chair
of the board during the time that I've been on the board--
he had been on the board, before he rotated off, for 18 years.
And let me know that he had only missed one board meeting.
So I feel compelled now to say to you,
after 12 years on the board I have only
missed one board meeting.
And part of what we need to do is really
to understand the difference between oversight
and management, to be sure that what we're doing is oversight,
but not getting lost in the weeds,
and actually damaging the college
by trying to micromanage it.
The board is engaged in oversight.
The administration is involved in management.
Hopefully you will share your thoughts with us,
at the end of what I hope will be an interesting hour.
And what I am going to ask my fellow board members to do--
we have one board member who headed back to Boston,
because he was on call for the weekend
and was worried about the traffic,
and another who was caught in traffic on her way here.
So we may get joined by another board member.
But I'm going to ask my colleagues, to my left,
to introduce themselves to tell us, I hope,
a little bit about what their day jobs are,
a couple of things about what they did when
they were Amherst students.
We're all here for our reunion.
So I guess you have to declare your reunion year.
I'm a '77.
When they joined the board, some of the committees
that each of us serve on, and why
anyone would choose to make this commitment.
So Dwight, your first up.
Good.
I'm Dwight Polar.
Class of '87.
I am in my second year in the board.
When I left Amherst, as a history
of international relations major,
I immediately went into almost 30 years of finance,
as a good liberal arts grad does, shifting gears.
Went off to New York, Tokyo, Boston,
and then have been based in London
the last eight years in my 24th year with Bain Capital doing
private equity.
So that's my day job, and where I live.
I've got three children.
One is a sophomore here.
My second is a sophomore here.
So I get a bit of exposure to student life right now.
My activities at Amherst.
I did JV soccer, glee club.
I was in the--
'87, as those of you who were here would know,
that was the last year of the fraternities.
So I got to experience the shift from having
to not having fraternities, which
is a bit akin to what's going on with the change
in the social dorms now.
And my roles on the board, I'm on the finance budget
committee, the development committee, and the instruction
committee.
And I guess, for just a minute on why
I wanted to join the board.
Obviously, the place has always been
incredibly important to me.
But it was actually at one of these sessions exactly--
it must have been five years ago.
I don't think it was 10 years ago, when someone started
asking the question of, how does the math work with how tuition
is rising, endowment returns, and a tough market are falling?
I guess it really was 10 years ago, because it
was right after the crisis.
How scholarship's rising, and such.
How does all that math work in this college?
And that question intrigued me a whole lot.
And has been something that I was interested in before
joining the board.
And it's been a fascinating education
to be involved with it now, and to work
with an extraordinary finance team
at the college in place now that works through that issue
to great effect.
So that's been my real focus on coming on the board.
I'm John Middleton.
I'm the class of '77, with Paula.
I've been on the board eight years.
I chairman of the buildings and grounds committee.
I'm on the budget and finance.
I'm on the advancement committee.
I'm on prestigeship committee.
I'm missing one.
I shouldn't miss it, but I am.
So when I was here I was a wrestler.
People, kind of, think sometimes that they're
the admission mistake.
Well, turns out that boards make admissions mistakes too.
So I have the distinction of being both an admission mistake
to get here, and an admission mistake to be on the board.
But they haven't caught on quite yet.
So I'm hoping to escape after another four years.
I think the reason why I joined the board is
I was a businessman.
I went from here to Harvard Business School.
And then I spent nearly 30 years building up a company
before I sold it.
So I'm semi-retired.
In my semi-retirement I am also the managing partner
of the Philadelphia Phillies, which
is sometimes fun, but right now, not.
So there are no reporters here, I hope.
Don't repeat that.
The reason I joined is I'm fascinated by organizations
and I'm fascinated by world class organizations.
I had the privilege of being on the board of Penn Medicine,
which oversees everything medical about the University
of Pennsylvania, which is another great institution.
And Amherst is a great institution.
And it's been great, and wants to stay great.
And that's a tough challenge.
Staying great over time is very difficult.
It takes enormous commitment, enormous effort.
And it takes resources, money, as well as people.
And the leadership that's required
to lead an organization like this is really something.
And I joined the board when Tony Marx was the president.
I really liked Tony.
I loved the direction he was taking the college.
And I had the privilege-- and really, it was a privilege.
I was on the search committee that hired Biddy.
And I was part of a small group--
there were about four or five of us who went down to Washington
for the first time we met Biddy.
And I remember walking out of that meeting with the others,
and I looked at them as we were getting in the elevator.
And I said, does anybody else think
we just talked to the next President of the Amherst
College?
And they all shook their heads, nodded their heads.
Biddy's great.
And I think the chance to work with leaders like Biddy
is a rare opportunity in life.
And I love working with her.
I love supporting her.
I love the way she challenges us.
And I love the way she allows us to challenge her.
It's been a great learning experience for me,
intellectually.
And it's a privilege to be here.
I'm very grateful.
Hi.
I'm Pat Fitzgerald, from the class of 1982.
And I've been on the board four years.
I chair the Human Resources Committee.
It's a little bit like going to college
again when you're on the board, except you're not
allowed to cut class at all, which is tough.
It's pretty exhausting to be on the board, to be honest.
People are very, very deep thinkers.
And those of us who are not can get very, very tired quickly.
I feel your pain.
And I look out, I see Michelle Deitsch, my classmate
who was on the board.
And she and I didn't know each other,
but we visited, and stayed in Morrow, when
we were high school seniors.
There was three of us.
My good friend John Goggins.
And Michelle's on the board.
And if someone had told me that night Michelle
would be on the board, I would believe it.
If they told me I'd be on the board I'd say,
oh god, they're in trouble.
The reason I joined the board, very sincerely, is I
found Amherst was a life changing experience.
And I thought it more life changing,
I realized, afterward, than when I was here.
My high school was a life changing experience.
And my parents were immigrants.
They went to sixth grade in Ireland, both of them,
and then came here.
And then to come to Amherst and have this opportunity-- which
was a gift, because I didn't pay anything to go here, basically.
To get that gift, and then just to realize how much you
learned outside the classroom.
And when I was here people always kept saying,
you'll learn more outside the classroom
than you'll learn in the classroom.
I always thought that was the stupidest thing ever.
I'm thinking, wait a minute.
You've got these really smart PhDs, and then the other people
who are your age.
So how would you ever learn more from them than the PhDs?
And maybe about 20 years later, it, sort of, sunk in.
And I realized you learned a lot.
And I think you learned a lot from the fact
that people were very different and they were
very different backgrounds.
And you got to mix with them a bit.
And you learn to think and debate, and do it
in a very constructive way.
And so it changed my life.
After here I went to law school.
I practiced law briefly in the private sector.
I spent 24 years as a federal prosecutor
in New York and Chicago.
Now I'm back in the private sector
for four years in Chicago.
And so when it came a time to figure out
what I wanted to do, sort of, the pro bono side,
I thought the thing that most impacted me,
life wise, was education.
And gave me a chance that I wouldn't have had.
And I thought any way I could contribute
would be a great thing to do.
I echo John's comments about Biddy.
The one thing I'd also say besides Biddy
being a remarkable leader in the room
is our chair is Cullen Murphy.
It's, sort of, remarkable to have
a board chaired by someone who writes for a living.
He's a very careful thinker.
And he could put pen to paper like nobody else.
But it's not just how he writes, but how he thinks.
And so it's a very, very good board.
Probably shouldn't roll grenades out there,
but some of the issues we've dealt with.
Of all the issues we dealt with, we
didn't spend the greatest amount of time on the mascot issue.
But I hope people paid attention to it.
And I thought when you looked at how Cullen wrote
the letter afterwards it was really
thoughtful, because on the one hand he said, look,
everyone writes that there are bigger issues than this,
but, then you realize that people really
got engaged in the issue.
And we had a really thorough discussion behind closed doors.
It was not unanimous.
It was vigorous.
But then people, sort of, closed ranks,
and sort of said, at the end of the day,
well, if the majority of the alumni
want to change the mascot, and the overwhelming majority
of the students want to change the mascot,
and the overwhelming majority of the faculty
want to change the mascot, and we don't even
have an official mascot, then maybe we
should change the mascot.
And that logic made sense to me.
But I also thought there were a substantial number of people
who believed in the mascot.
And we wanted to do it in a way that wasn't, sort of,
a condemnation of people saying, hey,
if you rally around that mascot.
That's fine.
And we weren't going to retry someone
from the 18th century in modern jurisprudence,
and figure out what exactly did he say?
Did he cause?
Did he do?
It was sort of like, we're going to just move on from this.
But we're not going to chastise people
who have loyalty to the mascot.
So if you hear people singing Lord Jeff this weekend,
they're not going to get arrested and thrown off campus.
Have at it.
And so just thought that issues big and small, as a group,
I think we wrestle with them, and we do our best to move on.
John, can you say something, as buildings and grounds,
about the amazing amount of construction that's
been going on and is going on, on the campus?
How far back do you want me to go?
So for those of you who haven't been here for a while,
the campus looks quite different.
I was talking at one o'clock presentation
with Tom Davies, from the buildings and grounds office,
on this Greenway projects.
And somebody came up to me afterwards.
And he said, I hadn't been on this campus in 15 years.
He said, I can't believe how different it is.
I mean, this is, when I talked about a commitment
to excellence, and being great, you need great facilities.
And this is a college that has been committed to,
and has done a remarkably good job of maintaining
its facilities.
The dorms is going through--
well, almost entirely complete.
Not entirely.
But they've gone through their dorms.
They're going through their academic buildings.
Obviously, the single largest project
in history of the college is the science center,
and because it's in the middle of construction,
it probably deserves the most focus of my comments.
But along with what we call the Greenway Projects,
it's the science center.
It's the Greenway itself.
And then it's the four dorms.
It's a $330 million project.
We started working on it really hard in the summer of '13.
And we're going to open up the science
center in September of '18.
And it was amazing to see the group of people,
because it was senior staff, it was senior administration,
senior faculty, pulling together,
and students, to, kind of, pull this off.
So let me try to think of a couple of things,
I guess, I should say about it.
Obviously, world class science is important in liberal arts
education.
I think one of the most interesting comments
to that effect was made to me by Shirley Tillman.
Shirley's the retired president of Princeton University.
And I had the great pleasure, I bring
Shirley up and back from Princeton to these meetings
every quarter.
And so I get to spend a lot of time with Shirley one on one.
And a number of years ago, when we
were working on the beginning of this project, she said to me,
John, she said, the dividing line between great liberal arts
colleges in the future is going to be
their science, their science departments, and their science
center.
And she said the reason for that is
it's cause it's so expensive to build a science center
and to maintain the science faculty at a world class level.
And she said the schools that don't have the money,
or don't have the commitment, and therefore don't
make the effort, and build these new facilities,
are going to fall by the wayside, over time.
So she said, for Amherst, if it wants
to be great in 25, 50 years, it has to do this project.
So I think that's an important place to start.
And the other thing I would say is,
we've all, basically, gone to a school that's a great school.
I mean, the university's been a world class
school for a long, long time.
But too many people don't remember that it wasn't always
the Amherst today.
If you go back in time, it was a lot less than that.
It was a New England regional college.
And it was really starting in the 30s
with Stanley King, who kind of created a vision for Amherst,
actually went out and retained Charlie Cole, who's a graduate,
to chair a long term strategic planning
committee that set the course for Amherst to become
what it is.
World war two intervened.
They shelved the strategic plan.
After World War II Stanley called it off.
He looked at the trustees and said, guys,
it's like a 10 year plan.
I'm not going to be here to implement it
from beginning to the end.
I think you need to go out and hire a new president.
And they all turned to Charlie Coleman.
And Charlie implemented the plan that he wrote
under Stanley's direction.
And that really was the transition
from Amherst in the 30s, and the 40s, and the 50s, and the 60s,
and continuing into a spectacularly great school.
What the importance of that is, as Shirley's comment
reinforces, you don't stay there without commitment,
and dedication, and effort.
And so I think this is such a great, great project.
In I don't know what else I could say about it.
I think it reflects the integration of sciences,
for those of you who are scientists,
you understand how different science is practiced today
than it was 20, 30 years ago.
The departments are all, kind of, scrambled.
They're on different floors, they're on different wings.
They have different adjacencies to each other
than they did 50 years ago.
I think when we're finished we're
going to have the greatest, the best, science
center of any liberal arts college in the country.
So I think it's something you all can be very, very proud of.
Paul, could I add something to that?
I sit on a different educational board, a public board.
And it's great.
But at the end of it there's a procurement package
that people voice vote on.
It has all of this, revise this lab,
fix this lab, which is building up.
A lot of money gets spent with, like, a voice vote.
I don't think people appreciate when
John says he's involved in these projects.
Like, before they built the science project, the people
from campus, the administrative people who were really
on top of this, faculty, students, and John,
visited half a dozen other campuses to walk through,
tour, get feedback, figure out what's going on.
The amount of time and effort, particularly John,
puts in for the board, is remarkable.
So when he says he's, sort of, in semi-retirement,
and runs the Philadelphia Phillies, like,
he has two jobs.
But it does show you the level of commitment people have,
which it's, sort of, like it's not just,
OK, we should have a science center.
Let us know what happens in a few years.
It's briefed every meeting and usually ends
with, on time and on budget.
So it's quite the effort.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Dwight, do you want to take us on a tour of Amherst finances?
Sure.
I think those of you that are involved in Education today,
in any way, know education is expensive.
Whether you're a parent paying for it or on the board
and trying to manage it.
And I think much of what the administration does here,
and we try to support on the board side,
is managing three sides of a triangle, which
are budget management, making sure
that spend is managed in a way that we
get the best possible education, and truly
the best in the United States internationally.
Two, is that we invest our endowment, which
we're fortunate.
I'll come back to that in the third piece of it,
to have a really strong endowment.
But we need to manage it in ever more complex markets,
and how to make money from the endowment,
because that's a key part of our income stream.
And then third is in development.
And we are blessed with an extraordinarily generous alumni
base that has contributed over time to build
a really powerful endowment.
And we rank up there in endowment per student, right
at the very top decile of schools, whether universities
or colleges.
But the challenge is managing those points of the triangle.
And I think where Amherst has gone and done
something very different from many schools
is to go forward and be the school of the future,
not just in academic rigor and strength, but in diversity.
And not just diversity of ethnicity,
but socioeconomic diversity, regional diversity,
situational diversity.
And that has been a journey that we are all very excited about.
And John mentioned Tony and [? Giday ?]
really getting us off on a fantastic path here,
which I was extremely supportive of.
And the beginning of this raised the challenge,
and it puts pressure on all three
points of those triangles, because people come
from different backgrounds.
And it costs a bit more to get everybody
into the same place on the learning side.
We've been able to embrace with the generational transition
of our faculty, a fascinating new faculty base.
And attracting faculty against the top colleges
and universities around the country is expensive.
So that has cost to it.
And as those of you in the financial markets know,
it's been a pretty complicated financial markets to navigate.
As I said, this was what drew me onto the board,
because I saw it as a really interesting challenge
to get at.
And to arrive, and find Kevin Wymenar, our CFO here
who is just extraordinary.
The finance team is as good here as in any of our private equity
portfolio companies, which gives me fantastic comfort.
Our investment committee is led by an extraordinary talent,
with Amos Hostetter, Peter Nadosi, both 80 or above,
with experience that is extraordinary,
and puts us at the top ranks of investing.
And as I said, the endowment has gone very well.
But keeping those in place is a real challenge.
And so the tension between ever better programs
to make sure that the schools at the top,
while balancing the finances, is something that we really
try to work with the administration
to support on all three fronts.
I'm sure people have questions on that.
But it's been absolutely fascinating to be
on the inside.
And if it was worrying to watch from the outside,
being on the inside and seeing the debate that actually
happens, the talent that comes to bear here,
has been incredibly gratifying to be part of.
So I want to tell you a little bit
also about myself, and my day job,
and then talk a little bit about our Amherst students, which
are an amazing group of young people.
So my day job is I'm a child psychiatrist at Mass General.
I transferred into Amherst with the first group of women.
I see some others in the audience
who were in those early days, because
of when I came to Amherst.
I'm Amherst's first female physician,
which is kind of fun.
I run a program at the Mass General helping parents
who have life threatening illness
to think about the well-being of their children,
in the context of what is usually a shortened life.
During my Amherst days I was not an athlete.
I am still not an athlete.
So I feel like this is my varsity team
sport, being a member of the board of trustees.
It is a varsity level team, indeed.
I was dorm adviser.
And I met, at that time, with many alumni groups that were
very opposed to coeducation.
I can remember meeting with members of the beta society
and having one of them stand up and say, how does it feel
to have ruined Amherst College?
With the confidence of being 19 I
assured him that I didn't think that our group of women,
and all the women now who have come after us,
were ruining the college.
And a member of the class of '78 said, each of you in this room,
referring to then the alumni who were substantially
older than us.
I realized, probably younger than me now.
But they seemed really old at the time.
As far as I can tell, each one of you
relies on Amherst as a place of excellence.
And if you are not willing to draw
from 50% of the population in who you choose
you can guarantee that 25 years from now
you would have allowed Amherst to fall farther and farther
behind.
And it wouldn't be the place that you wanted it to be.
That was the beginning of his illustrious career
in advertising.
Truly.
And I felt, at that time, supported
by my fellow classmates, by the then president of the college.
And for me, coming back, in all seriousness,
though I too joke about, how did I end up here?
And in fact, at our last reunion someone said to me, boy,
aren't you surprised, out of all of us,
you're the one that's on the board of trustees?
And I said no nobody's more surprised than me.
And then the child psychiatrist in me thought,
but do you have a frontal lobe?
Because you might have kept that one to yourself.
Not really.
My greatest joy being at Amherst on the board
is really the students.
Every time we have a chance to meet with the students
they're just extraordinary.
They are excited.
They are interested.
They are interesting.
I have had the enormous pleasure of having two of our sons
attend Amherst.
And each of them grew in wonderful ways.
Scott Turow, who was on the board when I joined,
described Amherst as the place where you become yourself.
And whilst I had little perspective
when I was a student that I was becoming myself
I had the great privilege to watch
my children become themselves.
And that is really an amazing thing.
For me, there are many aspects of student life
that are interesting and important, because Amherst
is as selective and continues to be more and more selective.
I think many of us think all the time
we would never have gotten into Amherst if we had to apply now,
because it's probably true.
But when you choose from such extraordinary kids
from so many different places, it
makes one take pause about what will and won't
allow them to succeed in the way that we would wish for them.
And when you think about what gets
in the way of success emotional well-being, time management,
substance use.
There are a number of mental health and emotional well-being
issues that actually interfere with people becoming the selves
that they might best become.
And again, I would echo my colleagues here
in saying that when you are sitting here and talking
with the administration, with the faculty, with the students,
the extraordinary care that goes into this stewardship
for every child that comes, in every young adult who
comes in to Amherst College, the care that goes into hoping
to help them to become the best young adult,
and ultimately, citizen of the world, is extraordinary.
And if I could, with my magic wand, offer something to you,
it would be to allow everyone to be a fly on the wall,
to actually hear these discussions,
and to actually get an up close view of how much care
goes into this.
And I think before I was on the board,
and as I've listened to some of the comments
from the alumni body, I think it may not always be apparent,
the deep thought that goes into the process,
so that people tend to get the headlines,
because that's what's available.
But I would really wish that you could hear how
deeply and carefully around, literally,
every student the conversations unfold.
And anyone have another comment, other thoughts?
You want to talk?
Nope.
[LAUGHING]
I have no thought.
All right.
OK.
So then we're going to stop about 5 to 10 minutes
before 5:00, so that people that want
to go to the powerhouse for the reception
there can make their way in the rain.
Maybe the rain has stopped.
And so we open it up to your questions.
I wasn't going to ask this department.
Jeff, because he's class of '52, why don't you
open up your meetings if you want us to know [INAUDIBLE].
That's [INAUDIBLE] it's a good question.
I've wrote in to the board several times.
Didn't get the response.
It's a good question I have about the board.
I'm not [INAUDIBLE]
But I ask, but how many here disagree
[INAUDIBLE], with Cullen Muprhy's statement?
An you can change the characterization, if you want,
that it's clear what Lord Jeff thought, conceptually.
But as to what he did, it's not clear.
Did Eddy disagree with that?
And I'll tell you why I ask him.
It is clear.
It's not [INAUDIBLE] clear what he didn't do.
He didn't know it.
If there's evidence why the change?
We have the science.
Do you folks agree with that?
That they just forgot.
I'll take a crack at it.
OK.
I don't remember exactly what he said about that.
And I won't want to talk about what other people on the board
said, but I'll tell you what I think.
It was pretty clear that he made statement
indicating that it would generally
be a good thing if someone were to give blankets infected
with smallpox, or measles, whatever it was,
to Native Americans.
And we can debate the context in which it happened.
I know people said this in a lot of e-mails,
talking about the savagery that was going on,
on both sides of that war.
[INAUDIBLE]
Right.
But whether people acted upon it, or not, people
can disagree, because there's a historical debate.
And we have enough trouble trying
to figure out what happened in situations in 2017, what
happened a week ago.
To go back a couple hundred years
and figure out whether or not people were actually
killed as a result.
But if he said that, we could have a very significant debate
about how much you have to forgive what people did
when things change over time.
But our whole point was, if 85% of the student body
feel like having that person as an unofficial mascot
was dividing us.
And most of the faculty felt that.
And 52% of the alumni felt that--
And when I say, that's not a 52, 48 issue.
It was a 52% were against the mascot, 38% were in favor.
And there was a gap of people who said, I really don't care.
It just seemed like, why do we associate ourselves
with something that's dividing us?
If we separate ourselves from that mascot,
and let people who support the mascot have their views,
that made sense.
So I don't think we thought we could solve exactly
what happened 200 years ago.
So nobody disagreed with that statement that--
I don't think that's what he said.
What?
I don't think that's what he said.
Yeah.
It sounds like that this is something
that you want to talk with one of us--
No, I--
Let's also say-- I think one of the interesting questions
a person has to ask him or herself
when you join a group like this board
is, what exactly do you represent?
And what does your vote represent.
I think one of the most courageous political acts
in this country was with Sam Houston, who
was a Southerner, voted against secession, in US Senate.
And he said, if you read his biography.
At the time he said, I know who elected me.
I know what the citizens of my state want.
But he said, when I joined the US senate I'm not just
a senator from a certain state.
I'm representing, in a sense, the entire United States.
So whatever I thought about Lord Jeff,
or whatever I thought about the claims, the issues
that I came to when I had to think about this was,
what's in the best interest of Amherst College?
And that's a different question to answer than,
what do I think, personally?
And I voted for what I thought was in the best
interest of Amherst College.
And that's--
One is what happened to the others?
Your question.
Right.
And I think, ultimately, to be honest
with you, I don't think the first question, hundreds
of years later, really matters.
The problem is, that said, is you
have 85% of your students feeling one way.
You have your faculty feeling another way--
the same way, rather.
At some point you just have to, kind of,
say, what am I doing up here as a trustee?
I'm charged with the institution's care.
And that's, ultimately, I think the standard,
and the benchmark, that you have to make yours.
[INAUDIBLE] A vocal student body out of Saxton, Missouri.
Maybe.
We can agree to disagree.
Are there other questions?
Andy?
So I wanted to talk about something that I [INAUDIBLE]
is--
so by accident [INAUDIBLE] fairly
involved students at Amherst.
So my wife and I both, and our daughters went to Amherst.
My youngest daughter [INAUDIBLE] says that.
I'm just kidding, I know you don't want to go to Africa.
[LAUGHING]
You know that it was funny, fight everybody.
So what happened with my oldest daughter who was here--
So ninth?
Yes.
Yeah.
Captain took over.
So anyway, I was walking around--
so I ended up being a medical researcher, provisioned
by [INAUDIBLE].
So I got know him as a friend.
And one guy asked, what do you do?
[INAUDIBLE] be a technician for a couple years.
Because what happens now, unlike when
we went to college, [INAUDIBLE] many kids a couple years off.
So I ended up hiring him to work in my [INAUDIBLE].
And I'm now on my sixth consecutive Amherst student.
So I come back.
[INAUDIBLE] most of the science people.
I wasn't a very good basketball player,
but I knew how to coach.
So I know a lot of the terms.
But one of the things-- it's very true.
[LAUGHING]
[INAUDIBLE] Jeff [INAUDIBLE].
Anyway, the thing that I did notice
was when I came back a couple weeks
ago to interview students.
So the kind of research I do is so different than what's
at Amherst.
The reality is Amherst can only do more basic level research.
It's a college, not a university.
And so they work on microorganisms.
There's a lot of what's called [INAUDIBLE]
So as interviewed him, and I told him I do all these things,
and I do the [INAUDIBLE].
He said, that's really cool.
I have no idea that's that what they do at Missouri.
And so the thing that I'm thinking about is,
it's quite a challenge to be a liberal arts college.
And I have a friend at MIT who's a trustee candidate.
And he is [INAUDIBLE].
At Amherst, and all these schools, very exceptional.
But the question is, how do you bridge the gap?
I think, is one of the questions,
because what you get exposed to is partly
what drives your future.
And how do you increase that?
So I have a simple thought to think about, and I [INAUDIBLE].
What I would suggest that you consider,
because obviously we don't want to be a vocational school.
What makes a great liberal arts.
But of all these fields, whether it be law,
whatever, business, is that maybe
there could be a senior level seminar
series where you pair a professor and an alumnus.
And then each week they bring in an alumnus in a certain area,
and you have a seminar, you have dinner,
and you hang out, and talk.
Because I was just so struck by these people.
Gee that's really cool, chemistry
I would never think that we could actually
do that and this.
And so I think that's the real challenge.
But I think one of the big challenges
for Amherst, and for people in the future,
is how do you link it?
So this might be a way to link alumni, in whatever area.
But also to gain some insight into the potentialities,
how you go about doing?
I mean, I spent a lot of time with these [INAUDIBLE]
the better [INAUDIBLE].
And that no you can't expect everyone to be smart,
and all that kind of stuff.
But anyway, I think that's just a thought to think about.
Thank you for sharing it.
And we will connect it with the faculty.
Thanks.
Yes?
Hi.
I'm Jeffrey Arch, '82.
Quick question.
General question.
Do you use guiding principals to ensure
that you're a board of oversight,
versus a board of management?
Because oftentimes, just in general,
there is that tension sometimes, between board and management.
So are there guiding principals that you use,
and how do you do a sort of board
where you can eliminate that, kind of, potential tension?
I'll take that.
Just in our [INAUDIBLE] role, that's in a lot of boards.
And I think the guiding principal
that we use, which is a very, very simple one here,
is noses in, fingers out.
It's a very simple way to say, it's
our responsibility to know what's
going, to understand who's responsible for what, how
are they doing, et cetera.
But keep our hands off the wheel.
And it's very simple, but it guides all boards.
And I think this board does it incredibly well.
And the challenge would be, and essentially all of us
said it, from different perspectives,
we have extremely capable administration here.
So when you get in and see that, I
don't have to say it's an easy job, because deal
with very complex topics, and not
everyone agrees all the time.
And so the second fundamental thing
I'd say, in mention of the board,
is having very healthy, open debate in the boardroom,
and speak as one voice when you leave the boardroom.
And so topics like we just touched on,
it's a very healthy debate.
And I would say to alums, the one thing
that people should not think is that when someone mentions,
have you thought about x?
Or I can't believe you don't think about y.
I'll promise you, it gets thought about.
It gets talked about.
And it gets aired very actively.
And the dialogue is very open.
So people are comfortable with healthy doses of conflict,
and confrontation, and contention.
But we do come, as John summarized
well, we speak as one voice when we leave the room.
And that, I think, fits our roles of being stewards,
know what needs to get done.
Make sure we have the best people in place.
The board has, really, one main one employee,
which is the president of the college.
And the president of the college needs to hire their team.
And we're always just making sure we
have the best president there.
We get a lot of visibility to the rest of the team,
and be supportive sounding boards for them.
And I say the structure of the board
works incredibly well with our chair, our president,
our board, and all the faculty that we get to see.
I would also say that, because really,
essentially everybody comes to every board meeting,
having read a three ring binder that's full,
and many things that occur in between.
And so I think the board is small enough,
the terms are long enough , that there's a culture of the board.
And I believe that every person that comes in
is affected by that intense culture of the nose in
and hands out.
I like that.
Yes?
[INAUDIBLE] ask each of you, when
you came onto the board, what did
you consider to be the biggest challenge for Amherst.
And what do you consider today to be the biggest
challenge of Amherst?
Yeah.
I'm going to start at the other end of the table.
[LAUGHING]
Go ahead, Pat.
I'll tell you what I think is the biggest challenge that
remains and reflects larger society,
is how we deal with people who disagree vehemently.
And I just think we live in a world in which people
turn on one set of cable news channels
to hear what they think repeated back to them,
and hear people who think like they do, and go out and say,
I'm right.
And they don't look at the other cable news channel,
on both sides of the debate.
And I think it's very unhealthy.
If you look at any of the old crossfire.
And you watch, people don't debate,
they just yell at each other, and sort of live in that world.
I think Amherst is especially important,
and to try to make sure that in our diversity we help
have a diversity of thought.
And not diversity of thought, having polarizing views,
yell at each other.
But try to make sure that we bring in people
that have healthy discussions.
I think one of the things we were reflecting on
in the last board meeting, there's
been a lot of that going on quietly.
But Jeb Bush came to campus, I think it went very, very well.
Rich Lowry from the National Review came to campus
and went very well.
So I think we want Amherst to be a place where there is not
a monopoly of views.
But it's not just to bring in one person
to yell or be yelled at, but to have
a broader diversity of thought.
I think that sums it up pretty well, don't you?
[LAUGHING]
So let me take two of Pat's comments
and knit them together.
When I was on the search committee that found Biddy,
we spent a lot of time talking to all
the various constituents.
And I was up here, probably, 8 to 10 times meeting
with student groups.
And it was astonishing how consistently the students
said to three or four of us on the search committee that
were at these sessions that what they really wanted
was to have the school help them, have the college help
them, kind of, learn from each other.
How to help them to, kind of--
and Pat said-- it wasn't 20 years that he realized this.
But he said how much he learned outside the classroom.
These kids today are very cognizant of that.
They're cognizant.
They like the diversity.
It's what attracts them here.
And they're trying to figure out how
they can use that diversity to their intellectual and personal
advantage, their personal growth.
And so I think that's the biggest challenge we face,
is helping them.
And to the extent that we do that we will also
touch on Pat's more recent point, which is,
I think Amherst can be a place where
people from very different backgrounds,
very different beliefs, can learn
to exist together in harmony and to express themselves
appropriately.
And I think if they do that here they'll
do that in their future adult lives,
and influence their communities.
And Lord knows we need adults out there
who can talk with each other not at each other.
So I see that challenge is to help these kids.
And we need to be intentional about how
we can help them to get to that point in their lives.
I couldn't say it better.
I've only been on two years.
So I mentioned the financial dynamic,
which was the thing that I thought
was the biggest challenge.
It is still something that I'd say is in the top few issues
we will continue to manage, going forward.
My first board meaning was the Jeff mascot,
and the post Amherst uprising.
So I thought, wow, there's a lot going on here.
And I thought, those are big challenges.
But not that far into it I totally
agree with what Pat and John said,
which is, what I think everyone can see from the outside looks
like tumult going on, and is a challenge.
I view it as very different.
It's a crucible of change going on in society, and for all
these various forms.
And I really do the broadest definition of diversity
that we're going through.
The most exciting thing is, I think, as a recruiter,
these are the people I want to recruit.
And whether it's into business, or government, or academia,
or anywhere, you want people that can deal with difference,
and embrace it, and find the opportunities in it.
And there's just not many of those places around today
with the little micro-bubbles that exist
in internet communication.
And so I think, as challenging as it may be,
and I watched my daughter go through this.
And there's times I said, boy, you're here at a tough time.
Then I say, but it must have been really tough to be here
during Vietnam, during co-education, when
the fraternities were removed.
There's always something.
So we can look and say, god, it's so tough right now.
This is just one more form of tough.
And that's the way the world is.
So I think it's fantastic, the crucible they're going through.
And I think they're going to be all the better for it.
I think when I started on the board number one, for me,
was how do we make sure that a liberal arts education, which
I deeply, deeply believe in, continues
to be seen as valuable as I believe it is, as many of us
believe it is, and in a changing world?
Even more so, I think the integration
of science and humanities has never been
more important than it is now.
And I think I am rotating off the board, first feeling
that the college is in extraordinarily good hands,
but continuing to have the sense that young people coming
of age, at this time, in the life of the world,
have a lot of challenges in front of them.
And I continue to feel for them, in terms
of their emotional health and well-being.
And that is not particularly about those at Amherst.
But those who are 18 to 22 and older.
So that's where my mind goes.
I want to welcome Kim Leary, who was caught in traffic instead
of being up here.
I invite you up, if you want to come sit with us.
Come on up.
Can I not only put you on the spot
and ask you for some perspective on your first year
on the board?
Sure.
Well, I'm delighted to be here.
And I apologize for being caught in that traffic.
You know, in joining the board, and in getting
to know Amherst in this new way, I
would say that what stood out the most for me is that we
each have our own Amherst.
We know the classes just ahead, just behind.
But when you are a member of the board,
you have a chance to, kind of, see
the arc of Amherst over many, many years and generations.
And the first year, at least for my first year,
I've spent it, sort of, trying to listen and learn
across those generations.
And as my colleagues have said, I
think the most exciting part of being on the board
is also being able to see the college
through the eyes of the students who are here now.
The questions, the concerns, the challenges
that they're facing now.
We map those, I think, inevitably
onto our own experience.
But just as we were talking about, being
able to tolerate difference, and being
able to hold different points of view,
also involves having a whole different Amherst in mind,
as we sit on the board.
And to think about where Amherst, in the future,
will be, and looking at the young ones in the room,
and thinking about what college they will inherit.
And that responsibility, I think,
means that you come onto the board in a very
humble position, and trying to take the position of a learner.
Last question.
It's more of a comment, than a question.
I've [INAUDIBLE] college president for 22 years.
Worked with a lot of trustees over that time.
First of all, I want to thank you.
Thank you.
Amherst trustees, meeting as often
as you do, everyone showing up, it's extraordinary,
it's unusual.
Believe in me, in a few thousand plus colleges and universities
of America, it's extraordinary, it's unusual.
Second, you mentioned that the most important job,
and it really is the most important jobs,
board of trustees, you just picked a new president.
And one should never forget that.
Everything goes through the president.
And that gets me to my other comment, which is, Amherst is--
and knows, it's a wonderful place now.
In many ways it's a much more wonderful place
than it was 50 years ago, when I was an undergrad.
I loved it then.
But presidents are sitting at the intersection
of all these changes.
And oftentimes they involve visits to emergency rooms.
They involve suicides.
They involve horrible challenges.
People have no sense of all the kinds of pressures
that can come after presidents.
So last comment is, the board is very, very important
to have the president's back, and insulate the president,
and to be a place that a president can
talk to everybody about it.
And say, hey I talked to faculty about things.
They can't talk to students about something.
And you need a board that needs to be
a place that the president can talk with 100% confidence.
So I thank you for what you're for Amherst.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
And now to the powerhouse.
And you can thank the president herself.
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