Remarks—Town/Gown Reception
Sunday, December 17, 2006—Daniel F. Sullivan

            Ann and I extend a very warm welcome to you all.  This annual reception is something we do to celebrate the wonderful, old, deep, and vitalizing relationship St. Lawrence has with the community in which we live. 

It occurred to me as I was thinking about what to say to you today that you might be interested, as we at St. Lawrence look ahead 5-10 years at our own development, how we imagine the impact of that development, if any, on the Canton community.  What things about the University that currently have impacts on the community are likely not to change?  What future directions that we today speculate about might we become serious about in a 5-10 year time period and what impacts might these directions have on the Canton community?  These latter, of course, we hope will be very positive.
So, what things are likely not to change?

• Our on-campus enrollment of about 2,100 students is not likely to change by very much, if at all.  If it changes, it will likely grow only slightly, as a continued consequence of improved student retention.  About 90% of St. Lawrence first-year students now return for their sophomore year, up from 82% a decade ago; and our six-year graduation rate is now over 77%, up from 73% a decade ago.  Retention rates for students now on campus should lead us up over 80% in six-year graduation rates very soon.

• At the same time, St. Lawrence is becoming more and more attractive to prospective students and their families.  Last year saw an all-time high in applications for admission.  We are running substantially ahead this year in comparison to last.  One consequence of this is that the number of prospective student and family visitors to St. Lawrence will likely continue to grow, with a very positive impact on the local economy.  In comparison to 2004 in the July through November time period, we are up 50% in the number of admissions-related campus visits, to 1,350, and that is just the number of prospective students.  Each prospective student is typically accompanied by one or more family members.  This is good news for St. Lawrence and for Canton.

• Our student body will also likely not change much in terms of its socio-economic diversity.  We remain committed to a level of socio-economic diversity quite unlike that of our highly selective peers. 

• We are one of a small number of selective independent liberal arts colleges that enrolls a truly diverse student body socio-economically:  this year 20% of St. Lawrence students are recipients of federal Pell Grants that go to students from families with incomes in the lowest quartile in America.  This contrasts with 4% at Washington and Lee, 7% at Davidson, 9% at Colby, 9% at Bates, 9% at Middlebury, 10% at Colgate, and so on.   Most people in the Canton community think most St. Lawrence students come from very wealthy.  There surely are wealthy students at St. Lawrence, but a much larger number of our students come from families with very low or quite modest family incomes.  We think this is a critical way for St. Lawrence to be different from its elite northeastern liberal arts college peers.

• In America today students from the highest family income quartile but the lowest academic ability and high school performance quartile have the same probability of attending and completing college as students from the highest ability and high school performance quartile and the lowest family-income quartile.  This degree of inequality of access to higher education is a national disgrace; our wealthier liberal arts college competitors are contributing to that national disgrace; our goal at St. Lawrence, as it has been throughout our history, is to be—as one alumnus from the Class of 1956 said at our home during reunion—the university of opportunity.  This is something about St. Lawrence that will not be changing.

• We are very likely to continue a high level of investment in our campus and in our programs in order to remain competitive for students, faculty and staff. 

• In the last decade we have invested $180 million in new construction and renovation of the campus.  In the next 5-7 years we hope to complete phases 2-4 of our science facilities improvement project ($23 million), and phases 3-6 of our arts facilities improvement project (perhaps $15 million more).  We also hope to begin to catch up with renovation and refurbishment needs in our humanities and social sciences facilities, and begin again regular annual investments in our student residential facilities.  This will mean a continued high level of construction employment at St. Lawrence.

• This will also mean a continued high level of fund raising—we hope to beat this year our $22.6 million all-time record cash fund raising total from last year and sustain or improve on that going forward.  This money gets spent locally and has a major impact on the community.  I am so very pleased at our success in this area.

• Another thing that will not change is that we will continue to be sensitive to the impacts University initiatives have on the Canton community, and we will continue to pursue our Canton Initiative in an ongoing attempt to increase the economic and quality of life vitality of the Canton community.

• In the next 5-10 years I believe we will continue to increase the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of our students, faculty and staff.  I note this as a continuity because it is the extension of a trend.  However, this growing diversity will be an ongoing challenge to us and to the Canton community.
   
• An example of a recent challenge that we met pretty well together because of good advance communication was the major Asian Studies conference we hosted this fall.  Among the attendees, some of whom arrived through Canada, were many faculty and research professionals currently working at American colleges and universities who were natives of South, East, and Southeast Asia.  And among these were U. S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens.  As you know, this is a region of heavy Border Patrol activity.  We were greatly concerned that there would be difficult incidents of inhospitality to our invited visitors at an event through which we hoped to illustrate the great hospitality of the North Country.  Good communication between our staff, the Border Patrol, local and regional police, and with conference attendees ahead of time to be sure they had proper identification, led to a very positive and successful conference.  This kind of event will only happen with more frequency as St. Lawrence continues to expand its international reach and continues to become more and more diverse.

• John Johnson, Jr. described wonderfully the North Country’s history of welcoming diversity in an editorial in the Watertown Daily Times a couple of years ago.  I was so impressed with it that I saved it.  He said:  “Certainly one of the hard lessons to learn is that racism is still a reality in our culture.  The most virulent form of race hatred lives on in the hearts of a few.  No place is free from such ignorance, such spite, such hardness of heart. But the North Country for generations has prided itself on a welcoming acceptance of people from many ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds. 

Northern New York sent legions of soldiers to fight in America's Civil War. Families here participated in the Underground Railroad; there are sites throughout the north, many unheralded, where slaves were hidden until they could make their way to Canada and freedom. The great orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke here. The preaching of Charles Finney, the Adams lawyer who became one of the leading Christian evangelists of his day, prepared the way for abolitionism.

For generations, Northern New York has welcomed and nurtured a wide range of people and will continue to do so.”

There will be challenges, to be sure, on the issues of diversity, but I know that we will work them out together.
So what do we think might change?  Some speculations about future developments:
A premise to which we subscribe as we think about the future of the University and Canton is that improvements in the economic and quality of life vitality of this area depend in important ways on growth—growth in population (especially school-age population) and growth in economic activity—of a sustainable and environmentally-sensitive kind.  The words “sustainable” and “environmentally-sensitive” are both critical here.  In particular, the tax base of the Village and Town of Canton must grow in order for us to afford the services, such as quality schools, that at least partly define quality of life.  St. Lawrence needs these things for it to thrive, and we believe the citizens of our community need these things for them to thrive.  So you will see that several of the “speculations” below are intended to lead to this kind of growth.

• While our student body is unlikely to grow much in the next 5-10 years, it is likely that the number of St. Lawrence faculty and staff will grow as a necessary consequence of our attempts to be even more competitive.  This will increase the demand for high quality, affordable, sustainable design, environmentally-sensitive housing in and near Canton, and it will make the continued quality of the Canton Schools an even higher priority.  These added jobs will be relatively high paying in relation to the North Country’s average salaries.

• We are likely to try to find ways to sell off homes we own in Canton that currently house students, faculty and staff and replace them with sustainable design, environmentally-sensitive, “Smart Homes-type” town houses and other residences.  In the case of homes that are now used as student residences, that would get those properties back on the tax rolls, reduce our maintenance costs, and improve admissions competitiveness and student retention.  In the case of faculty and staff housing, it would add further to the property tax rolls (because new housing we might build would also be taxable, as current faculty and staff housing is), provide models for sustainable development, and ease faculty and staff recruiting and retention.  We are likely to want to do this near, adjacent to, or, if we are talking about student housing, on campus.

• We are likely to seek to partner with a developer on a variety of Canton Initiative, Coming Home-type investments, again with a commitment to sustainable design and environmental sensitivity:  e.g., some residential development of the golf course property; some partnering with United Helpers as they seek to expand into younger markets; partnership with a developer to accomplish the vision of the Heritage Island Project, and sustainable, environmentally sensitive, aesthetically pleasing downtown development near the Grasse River; and possibly also a limited partnership with SUNY Canton where we provide new construction and/or renovation opportunities for SUNY Canton students to learn the construction business.

The idea here is to use the attractiveness of living near two universities in a wonderful, historic residential village close to almost unlimited outdoor recreational opportunities, regional and Canadian cultural attractions, and just great people, to grow the local population in a way that enriches our local environment.  St. Lawrence’s growing success and attractiveness to current and prospective students and their families, and to alumni and parents—something we cannot take for granted but must continue each day to try to ensure—is good news for the North Country. 

I hope you agree, and that you see our vision as one that makes being here in Canton increasingly special and positive for you.  Unlike some for-profit corporations that forsake places where they have been for a long time and move elsewhere, we are going to be here as long as anyone can foresee, and we are going to be here in a partnership spirit which seeks a better Canton community for all.

It’s truly great to have you with us on this day.  Ann and I wish you the very best of holiday seasons—a special time with family and friends, a time of renewal, remembrance and commitment to a world of greater peace and a world where prosperity is much more widely shared.  Our challenges are daunting, our opportunities to make a difference abounding.  Let us move forward together.  Thank you, again, for being with us on this very special day!

Data are for 2003 as reported by Tom Mortensen in Postsecondary Opportunity, February 2006.  In that year 21% of St. Lawrence students received Pell Grants.

 

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