Remarks: Daniel F. Sullivan—President’s Dinner
New York City—April 3, 2002

It’s absolutely terrific of you to join us for this very special St. Lawrence evening. The willingness of the alumni, parents, and friends of St. Lawrence in this room to support our work with gifts of exceptional generosity and thoughtfulness, year after year, lifts our spirits more than you can imagine. Thank you all, from the very bottom of our hearts.
A year ago at this time the campaign total stood at $96 million toward our $130 million goal. Today, it stands at $120 million with almost exactly nine months to do. Last year’s cash total raised by this time of the year was $10.4 million, and we ended up the year at $16 million. Today our cash gift total for the year is more than $15.7 million. We obviously don’t know yet what the total will be. But one thing is clear—we are beginning to succeed at fund raising at the level necessary to compete with the very best liberal arts colleges. Your faith in us, and your willingness to help us make St. Lawrence a better place for our students, gives us a boost of immense proportion.
We continue to strengthen people and programs, and we continue our efforts to upgrade and improve the facilities that allow our people and programs to be productive—to do their work in environments that support rather than impede—and that provide spaces for our students to live and learn. The Newell Field House and fitness center is up and running, and is having a remarkable impact. We break ground in June for a new student center which, when completed, will allow us to reallocate the Noble Center space to enhance the arts. We also break ground this summer on construction of 5-bedroom townhouses for senior students, to be located between Eben Holden and the golf course. And in a few weeks we will select an architect to design the $50-$60 million program of new construction and renovation that we have been planning for several years for our science and mathematics departments. Our ability to proceed with the first phase of this project has been made possible by an extraordinary $10 million gift from trustee Sarah E. Johnson ’82—St. Lawrence’s largest gift ever. It has been a wonderful fund raising year!
These investments in the quality of what we do at St. Lawrence—intended to help us become even more demanding academically while we at the same time pay serious and careful attention in our co-curricular programs to the development of the whole student—are about getting better faster than the competition gets better. There is no easy way to strengthen our competitive position in admissions, but we are getting steadily stronger.
Application numbers for the fall class (Class of 2006) are now at 2,859, up from a final, final total last year of 2,745, and the largest total we have received since 1981 and the third highest since 1972. We have admitted 1,846, which translates into an admit percentage of 65%. Last year’s final admit number was 1,674, for an admit percentage of 61%. Last year, of course, competing more frequently with the best liberal arts colleges in a year when application numbers and applicant quality both increased significantly for us, we did not meet our class size goal of 550. Using last year’s yield (and not a blend of previous years, where yields were higher), we are predicting a minimum class size in excess of our target of 550, of equal or better quality, somewhat greater diversity, and requiring somewhat less financial aid. Our ability to continue to strengthen our admissions position is greatly dependent on the support you so generously provide.
Our location remains one of our largest challenges and opportunities. This will not surprise you, I suspect. Our job in admissions is to find the prospective students who see our location as an advantage. It’s an obvious point, really, but I felt when I arrived six years ago that we weren’t doing enough either in the curriculum or the co-curriculum to attract students who care about outdoor education, outdoor recreation, and the deep moral and practical issues of sustainability.
That first year we commissioned some research to discover what our current students like most about St. Lawrence, and what those prospective high school students who had contacted us inquiring about admission were looking for in a college. The results were striking:
· More than 50% of current students said outdoor recreational opportunities were essential to very important in selecting St. Lawrence. Even more importantly, more than 60% of inquiring prospective students rated outdoor recreational opportunities as an extremely to very important characteristic of the college they were seeking to attend. Just so you know the numbers, we receive over 35,000 inquiries a year, so 60% of that number is still a very large number.
· Among inquiring prospective students, those who said outdoor recreational opportunities were an extremely to very important characteristic of the college they were seeking to attend were:
· 27% more likely to describe themselves as friendly
· 31% more likely to describe themselves as enthusiastic
· 34% more likely to describe themselves as adventurous
· 18% more likely to describe themselves as involved
· In addition, they were:
· 53% more likely to be seeking a college with a supportive environment
· 58% more likely to be seeking a college with an emphasis on values and ethics
· 40% more likely to want to be able to personalize their education to meet special interests and needs
· 35% more likely to want a college with friendly students
· 25% more likely to want a college whose professors are accessible
· 36% more likely to want the opportunity to participate in intercollegiate athletics
· 21% more likely to want a liberal arts education
· 40% more likely to want a college where all qualified students pursue independent research on a topic of special interest to them
· 25% more likely to want a college where students team up with a professor to conduct research
· 27% more likely to want a college where students with the same interests can live together in special residence halls
The point of presenting all of these data is to indicate that the wonderful outdoor opportunities our location affords students makes us greatly more attractive to just the kinds of students of whom we’d like to have more—the kinds of students you’re going to meet in a few minutes.
As we were beginning to digest these research results now several years ago, I met Associate Professor of Biology Karl McKnight and Associate Professor of Philosophy Baylor Johnson (not with us tonight). The rest, as they say, is history. As we mused together about where St. Lawrence ought to try to go on my watch, they both said that something they have always wanted to see St. Lawrence do—indeed something they themselves would like to lead—is establish a semester-long off-campus program in the Adirondacks. It should be very demanding academically, they said, and it should find ways to get under students’ skins on the great human issue of sustainability. I said that if they would put it together, we’d find a way to do it. Such a program, we all agreed, would make a wonderful aspect of our location a central part of the curriculum itself.
Lots of others stepped up to make it all happen, including trustee Don Sohn, who provided much-appreciated catalytic financial support. I am as excited about this program as I have ever been about an undergraduate learning opportunity, and so we decided to share our excitement with you tonight. We have three members of the faculty and two students from our Adirondack Semester Program this past fall, all of whom are introduced in the program at your tables, so I won’t repeat their biographies. Karl McKnight, whose energy, blood, sweat and tears made sure this program got started, will lead the presentation. We’ll save some time for you to ask questions at the end.
Professor Karl McKnight!