St. Lawrence University: President

In a recent conversation, Frank Augsbury Jr. – 44-year trustee and now trustee emeritus – urged me tot think of St. Lawrence as the “University of the North Country.” The region from the Adirondacks to the Laurentians, with the St. Lawrence River in between, is characterized by economic interdependence, great political and cultural interest, cultural diversity and striking natural beauty. It is also, at least in our part of the North Country, undergoing economic stress, localized environmental degradation and lack of opportunity. At the same time that St. Lawrence seeks to provide its students with an education they can use to be of service anywhere in the world, Frank argued that we should not miss our unique opportunity to use our linkage with Canada and our North Country base to bring distinctiveness to the education of our students and to be a force for improving the economic vitality of the region and the quality of life of its residents.
That was good advice, I think, so I was pleased to be able to tell Frank about a new initiative focused on the economic, aesthetic and quality-of-life vitality of Canton – our village, and the place where we can most easily and effectively think globally but act locally. Under the direction of Tom Coakley, dean of administrative operations and Canton native, but involving an advisory board of community leaders, trustees, staff and faculty, we have embarked on a long-term community development initiative which seeks to identify co-investment opportunities where both St. Lawrence and the Canton community win. Though this is only one of the ways in which we will be taking Frank’s advice seriously, it’s important that the wider St. Lawrence community understand what we are doing.
A symbiotic relationship between Canton and St. Lawrence has, of course, existed from the start, when a group of townspeople offered land and capital to compete with other villages wishing to become the home of a seminary sponsored by the Universalist church. Today, the University’s $20 million in annual payroll and more in local purchases provide the backbone of a substantial portion of the local economy. The Canton community, in turn, provides the civic infrastructure of fire protection, public safety, sewer, water and transportation we require. Most importantly, we depend on Canton to be the kind of place that will be attractive to prospective students, faculty and staff. And because St. Lawrence is large relative to the size of the community, our interdependence is magnified.
Over time, the University’s response to this interdependence has been more reactive and ad hoc than planned and intentional. When the University has made investment decisions involving property in the community, presumably in the interest of the community as well as itself, such decisions have seldom been made in consultation with community leaders. St. Lawrence has not, in recent years, taken a role in planning for the community’s future needs. We have not generally optimized our investment of time and capital in the community, and so our approach has not managed to override natural tensions over taxation and business competition to demonstrate our concern for mutual success.
SEVERAL TRENDS are converging to warrant a more proactive approach to the community on the part of the University. First, the intensified competition for students, faculty and staff makes the attractiveness of our surroundings and the quality of local services even more important and our interdependence with the community all the greater. Areas of the village near the University could benefit from investments on our part and others.
Second, and from the community’s perspective, both the village and town of Canton contend with very high proportions of tax-exempt property, which means that the tax burden is spread across a small-than-otherwise tax-paying base. The community faces rising costs in the form of aging infrastructure that must be replaced. At the same time, the tax base is shrinking as some larger taxpayers have left or ceased to function.
The leveraged effect of these adverse changes may be serious enough to create a downward spiral in the economic condition of our community. Increased tax burden added to already comparatively high levels of taxation drives present and potential community property owners (and taxpayers) away, thus creating the potential of a downward spiral.
We believe that the University has the potential, given the size of our economic impact on the community, to counter a good portion of this negative fiscal picture by being both a co-investor and a catalyst in the enhancement and beautification of our surroundings. And so we have begun an initiative with the following three goals:

These goals will be pursued with funds approved for investment in this initiative by the Board of Trustees – perhaps as much as $1 million in new funding beyond existing investments in such areas as housing, our golf course and the University Inn. Our investment would, in general, be managed so as to maintain the present value of the funds invested over time.
We have tried in our planning for this initiative not to be naïve regarding the potential stumbling blocks along the way. First, we have to recognize that it will take time for the positive effects to begin to be visible. We have to be in this for the long haul. Second, we will at times have to respond not as a beneficent charity but as a prudent business entity. We must, because our primary obligation is to the education of our students, see this initiative as a self-interested activity which also, we hope, creates a wind for the community. We cannot assume that all members of the Canton community will always agree with our investment decisions, even if made in open consultation with key community leaders, and so there may be tensions occasionally.
We believe, however, that they potential upsides of our Canton Initiative are far greater than the potential downsides. The better the aesthetic and economic vitality of our community, the better is the future of St. Lawrence. This is one way that we can truly begin to be the “University of the North Country”: strengthening our home base while providing an education to our students that will enable them to make a contribution in fields and vocations of almost any kind in almost any part of the world. These are goals worthy of a great University.