Remarks—Phase 2 Arts Project Dedication
Daniel F. Sullivan—May 18, 2007

I want to extend a warm welcome to all of you to this dedication ceremony and open house in honor of the completion of Phase 2 of our arts facilities project.  What a very special day. 
As I was thinking about what I might say here I reached back into my files and pulled out the short paper I wrote in April, 1999, very simply titled “The Arts at St. Lawrence University.”  From the vantage point of eight years later, I was delighted to see how much of it still makes sense today.  At the same time I was surprised when forced to recall some of the ideas for making progress we were discussing then, especially in the area of arts facilities.  Remember our first pass at a facilities program that could lead eventually to arts facilities enhancement:  move all departments and classrooms out of Piskor into temporary bridge space; renovate and add on to Piskor to make a new student center; upon completion of the new student center and the vacating of the Noble Center, renovate the Noble Center and Griffiths to make a new, integrated arts facility.

Well, we got right the fact that a new student center would have to happen before an arts project could begin, but in the end, by not renovating Piskor, we know we saved money and we probably saved several years on the timeline for making progress on meeting the large and important facilities needs we have in the arts. 

I am struck again by the long lead times inevitably involved in order to go from communication by faculty of an urgent facilities need, to formal agreement that meeting that need will be an institutional priority, to finding a workable strategy after testing alternative pathways, to having serious and deep discussions about program and staffing for the future, to conceptual design of an actual facilities solution and its costing, to committing to a financial plan to finance the project, to locating the financing and funding completion of architectural work, and finally to completing construction.  In the case we are celebrating today, that timeline was at least eight years, it required design and construction of a new student center, and it will be longer, obviously, before we are finally done with what needs to happen for the arts at St. Lawrence.  Put another way, if you are going to get a major facilities improvement to happen on a university campus, you have to commit to a direction and stay with it.  Changing your mind on institutional priorities in the middle is incredibly costly because each next step in the process requires buy-in by key stakeholders who need to be reassured that something is, in fact, going to happen.  As a colleague of mine once said, “It’s a wonder the bear dances at all!”

Very importantly in all of this, there was a time when the need was clear and recognized to be urgent for St. Lawrence’s present and future, but the sciences had gotten ahead in the queue.  I don’t think any of us, five or six years ago, thought we could find the capital to work on our arts facilities while we were at the same time building Johnson Hall of Science, having had to spend $15 million on a student center first.  Faculty and students in the arts pushed us hard on the urgency, however, and we did manage to devise a multi-year, multi-phase plan with manageable bites of capital for each phase, and the Board of Trustees made a special $1 million capital allocation from endowment to jump start the process—a bold risk taken that has proved to be a wise risk taken.  That made it possible to make a convincing case to some leadership donors that their gifts would contribute to measurable, meaningful short-term progress and that short-term progress would lead to getting it all done.  Phase 1 was completed two years ago.

Some of those same donors, joined by others convinced of the critical importance of the arts at St. Lawrence, worked with us to pull together the capital—entirely from gifts payable over the construction period—that has made possible the completion of Phase 2, which we are here to dedicate today.  And the snowball continues, because their leadership giving to Phase 2 stimulated additional donors to join some of them so that we have almost $4 million in capital committed to what we hope will become at least $6 million to allow the construction of Phase 3.  One of those, of course, is Trustee Emeritus Dick Brush, whose gift toward Phase 3 is in excess of $3 million.  No one, over many years, has done more for the arts at St. Lawrence than Dick.

The vitalization of St. Lawrence our investment in facilities has produced has been wonderful to see.  In this case, in the end, it’s all about enriching dramatically the arts education of our students and facilitating a group of committed, talented and devoted faculty as they sought to make it happen.  I am very proud of all of them.

Who are the people and institutions who made completion of Phase 2 possible?  Many of them are with us for this event today:

Trustee Allan Newell
Bob Frehse—here representing the William Randolph Hearst Foundation
Trustee Jay ‘77 and Val ’77 Ireland P’00
John and Susie Wean (here today with daughter Britton ’06)
Trustee Karen Wachtmeister P’99
Gil ‘50, Ann and Jon ‘81 Maurer, representing the Maurer Family Foundation
Trustee George Cochran P’06, ’08, ‘10
Connie Saddlemire ‘70
Parents Committee Co-Chairs Doug and Pam Farr P’03, ’06, ‘09
Peter ’75 and Kathy Wyckoff
Trustee Emeritus Dick Brush ‘52

Not in attendance but wonderfully generous to this project were:
The Davidow Family Foundation
Jonathan and Ingrid Hodges P’06
Barbara Newell ‘48
Trustee Peter ’75 and Mary Jo ’75 Hunt P’04

Please join me in a warm round of applause and maybe even a “hip hip hooray!”

Now I’d like to introduce Vice President of the University and Dean of Academic Affairs Grant Cornwell who will tell us something of the significance of the arts facilities renovations we have been able to do so far for the arts program and curriculum.

Some of the gifts that have made Phase 2 of this project possible have resulted in the naming of spaces within this facility.  I’d like each of the donors of these spaces to come forward now when I call their name or names so that we can unveil the appropriate plaque and read the citation. 

Allan Newell—Newell Center for Arts Technology
Bob Frehse and Gil Maurer—William Randolph Hearst Studio
Jay and Val Ireland—Ireland Student Arts Lounge and Ireland Green Room
John, Susie and Britton Wean—Computer Equipment for the Newell Center for Arts Technology
Karen Wachtmeister—Wachtmeister Arts Studio
Gil, Ann and Jon Maurer—Maurer Family Studio

Thank you all for coming.  Please, at your own pace, take a tour of these newly renovated spaces, view the student/faculty demonstrations and enjoy the refreshments.