Daniel Webster College
A Vision for 2015 and Beyond

Robert E. Myers
President

As Presented to the College’s Board of Trustees
At Its Meeting of October 22, 2005

Preface

On July 1, 2005 I assumed the presidency of Daniel Webster College.  Throughout the search process that led to my appointment and in the subsequent setting of goals for my presidency, it was very clear that the Board, the College and its constituents were seeking a bold, dynamic, and compelling vision to take Daniel Webster College to new levels of performance, relevance, and excellence.  The change anticipated and expected by all was to be transformational, not simply incremental steps towards acceptable performance and financial solvency.  Most certainly, it was on the basis that all desired and, indeed demanded, transformational change that I believe I was selected as president and the basis on which I accepted the challenge.

Since July 1, I have taken the opportunity to purposefully and carefully examine the institution, its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  In addition, I brought together members of the campus community and alumni to engage with me in a series of discussions to think about our future, to unveil our aspirations, our hopes and our dreams.  Since every vision can be sharpened, that process of listening carefully will continue. 

Still, having listened carefully, now is the time to marry the dreams of students, alumni, faculty and staff to my own and clearly state the desired destination.  While many more conversations, discussions, debates, planning and plans will be necessary to determine how we reach the destination, it is the beacon towards which we navigate that is a critical first step to identify.

I have consciously chosen the year 2015 as the estimated time of arrival to our destination.  Visions are supposed to be statements of aspiration, and the aspiration I have will take approximately 10 years to begin to show the first signs of fulfillment.

At risk of repeating myself, the vision is not the plan.  This vision, certainly, is not about getting through the next three years and gaining financial solvency to the point that we no longer refer to the College as “financially fragile.”  We are already on a track to achieve that tactical goal.

This vision is about aiming for the stars.  If we come anywhere close to being the best we can be, we’ll have knocked the ball out of the park.  And if we’re not about being the best, we are all in the wrong ballpark.

I hope you will agree that the vision is bold, compelling, and exciting.  It may also be seen as unrealistic, fraught with risk, and simple.  But, anything worth doing is initially perceived as unrealistic, perhaps even impossible.  If it were easy and easily achievable, it would not be worth doing and certainly not worthy of our doing.  Elegant simplicity in stating our destination is precisely what we should strive for … it will be the achievement and the building blocks required that will be complex and necessary.

Last, but not least, there should be a sense of urgency about this vision business.  Daniel Webster College will be part of a vanishing breed unless it commits and commits early to fundamental and transformational change.  We must begin our journey to a new place now.

The Vision

Daniel Webster College has, in spite of its recent trials and tribulations, a solid core of programs and a philosophy about how to create a first-rate learning experience for students that can and will be built upon.  It is from that solid core of strengths that the vision comes.  It is intended to be distinctive, to separate us from the rest of the pack.

By 2015, Daniel Webster College will be in the top quartile of small colleges in the nation that have mastered the balance of developing today’s professional workforce and preparing tomorrow’s professional workforce for careers in aviation, business, engineering, and information technology.

This vision connects the curriculum of the College to a distinct niche.  It defines the parameters of the futures for which we wish to prepare our students.  And it challenges our faculty – in all divisions – to renew existing programs and to develop programs mindful of the future leaders we seek to teach.  Within these four arenas are opportunities, in the human sciences as well as technology and business, for a rich academic profile for the College--a profile that will strengthen the brand of the institution.

Top Quartile in the Nation?

Within the universe of all 3,500 colleges and universities in the United States?  No, obviously not.  Within that subset defined as “small colleges” (i.e. having a residential student body of fewer than 5,000)?  No, probably not.  And possibly not in any head-to-head comparison with an entire institution since this vision positions us not as a comprehensive college but as a college that focuses on four distinct sectors of the American workforce.  Finding other institutions that focus similarly on these four sectors, therefore, makes institution-to-institution comparisons near impossible.  However, it is quite possible and perhaps preferable to compare the career preparation efforts of our aviation programs with those of others, of our business programs, of our engineering programs, and of our technology-related programs.  The basis for comparison, then, is not the institution but the programs and the sectors they serve.

It will be incumbent upon us to develop the measures to demonstrate that we may be small, but we deliver enormous value in terms of career preparation and advancement in the four sectors.

Professional Workforce Development – Today and Tomorrow

Colleges and universities – particularly small institutions without the benefit of large endowments to cushion them from the vicissitudes of the marketplace – ignore relevance at their own peril.  To be relevant in the absence of great wealth and cash reserves simply means understanding what the market needs and finding a way to provide it.  Being the best means finding a way better than any other’s to meet the market’s needs.

The market tells us clearly that many colleges and universities fall short of the mark of turning out graduates who are prepared to begin their careers in the workforce immediately upon graduation – employers find themselves in many cases training or retraining new graduates so they can begin to be productive contributors.  Moreover, employers are increasingly looking for other ways to train, mentor, and advance the veteran members of their workforce besides standing up within their organizations the equivalent of “corporate universities,” and in many cases they are turning to colleges and universities to meet this need, with mixed success.

While Daniel Webster College won’t serve every high-demand field, its core strengths in aviation/aerospace, business, engineering, and information technology match very well with employment forecasts over the next decade.   Our task is to understand at a very rich and fundamental level the workforce needs of each of those sectors and to create the kinds of educational experiences that will prepare those who aspire to careers there as well as those who are already professionally engaged.  In so doing, Daniel Webster College positions itself as a provider of “lifelong learning” – a very different and seamless model altogether from the current approach which is to segregate undergraduate residential education from commuter “night school” for working adults.

What’s Needed for the Journey

We have a lot of work to do.  Certainly, we are not completely out of the woods in terms of our “financial fragility.”  Yes, we are making progress thanks in large part to thoughtful and careful stewardship of finances under our chief financial officer.  But it will take perhaps the next three years of continuing that course before we can claim we’ve turned the corner for good.

Meanwhile, we need to get traction; otherwise we will find ourselves waiting those three years to start on the path I have described.  Business as usual will not suffice; we need a couple of breakout strategies to generate some extra breathing room, accelerate the pace to financial recovery, and sow the seeds for the future.

The goals for the next three years are intended to get that needed traction:

Goal 1:      Exploit the adult market for working professionals.

The fastest growing sector in American higher education is that focused on the working adult – taking education to them on their terms of convenience.  We have started down that path, but we need to get very aggressive in this play.  The online MBA in Aviation is a first step.  It is also a template that can be adapted to other fields.  We will also examine corporate training and professional development that may or may not include degrees or even credit-bearing programs but which are relevant and highly sought out by the four sectors we serve.  This is all about demonstrating relevance to those sectors … that we understand their current and anticipated workforce needs and are prepared to provide solutions.

          Goal 2:      Build a professional advancement team.

The endowment of Daniel Webster College is pitifully small.  That needs to grow with a focus on engaging in the fundamentals of fundraising as well as on major gifts solicitation and building affinity relationships with others.  With new leadership, that process has begun. 

Goal 3:      Grow undergraduate, traditional enrollment to 750 students.

We’ve had a banner fall, the largest incoming class in the history of the College.  There is consensus that we need to drive our undergraduate enrollment up by approximately 200 students, to 750.  Doing so will require thoughtful planning on whether to accommodate a portion of those students in residence halls and how, and if not what alternatives we might consider.  Certainly, we have the opportunity to consider as one alternative replacing one very old and outdated residence hall with a new and larger facility to accommodate this growth.

Goal 4:      Revitalize the academy.

We need to add new programs to our academic inventory and we need to review and retool our existing programs.  First out of the chute is aviation, followed by the current computer science offerings.  In addition to inventory, however, we also need to rethink our delivery and ensure we have the very best pedagogical and androgogical models identified to emulate.  In the area of addressing current professional workforce development needs, it is imperative that we develop delivery channels that are highly scalable.  And, it is imperative that we find a way to better integrate critically important social sciences and humanities education with the highly technical and analytical disciplines associated with aviation, business, engineering, and information technology.  In so doing, it is high time the College take the next steps on the role of scholarship at Daniel Webster College and what it means to create, with students and with staff, a community of scholars.

Goal 5:      Enhance the student life experience.

The fact that we have a student retention rate that hovers near 90% is phenomenal and, frankly, baffling.  The good news is it is living testimony to the enormous energy invested by our student affairs staff, and other members of the College community.  That level of performance notwithstanding, however, the quality of “student life” on the campus is marginal at best.  Students lack basic amenities available to them at competing institutions and they lack sufficient integration in both the campus community of faculty and staff as well as the larger community that is Nashua.  We will explore initial steps designed to remedy this.

Goal 6:      Professionalize.

Any further gains in operational efficiency in the College will come at a price, primarily in terms of investing in a basic management information system, which Daniel Webster College currently lacks.  Any fundamental link of performance to compensation in the College will similarly come at a price – in terms of developing a Human Resources team with the requisite expertise, again another void in the current organization.  These are but two examples of basic foundation blocks in any 21^st century organization that must be remedied immediately if we have any intention of moving forward.

Goal 7:      Diversify our revenue stream.

As with many colleges and universities, we are tuition dependent for revenue.  Currently, just over 98% of our total revenue is derived from tuition.  While tuition will always be the largest contributor to revenue, that dependence must come down.  We will examine a variety of opportunities that promise to reduce our dependence on tuition and will provide additional wherewithal to launch new initiatives.

Goal 8:      Feed our family.

The single most important asset in any institution of higher education is human capital.  To put it bluntly, through no malice of forethought, we have failed to maintain the nutritional levels of our faculty and staff to keep them motivated, energized, and focused on full engagement.  Any further erosion of perceived or real benefit in terms of compensation, and we will simply fail to keep them, period.  Reinstating contributions to retirement is a good first step; providing a modest cost of living adjustment is, as well.  We will need to do more, and our goal should be for Daniel Webster College to be a local employer of choice for the best and brightest we can attract and retain.

Goal 9:      Make friends … everywhere.

Just as we cannot be all things to all people, we also cannot do everything we need to do alone.  Inter-institutional collaboration is critically important to our ability to successfully plan and launch new initiatives.  We must accelerate the creation of formal articulation agreements with other institutions, particularly feeder schools, and those that will enable us to capitalize upon mutually advantageous opportunities; an initiative currently under exploration to partner with another school on aviation maintenance is one example.  Partnerships with the private business sector, as well, will be explored to accomplish those objectives we might never accomplish alone; construction and management of new facilities to replace abysmal residence hall space and early discussions on creation of a campus “retail” zone are two examples.

Goal 10:    Unshackle creativity and innovation.

One of the biggest constraints to advancing Daniel Webster College is a current “culture of poverty” and a calcification of creative thinking and innovation.  When an institution, as a whole, begins any conversation with a recollection of its dire financial history and implicitly or explicitly articulates we can’t afford our dreams so why talk about them, we come dangerously close to committing ourselves to a bleak future.  We must patiently encourage the campus community to raise its gaze beyond the blades of grass before us and begin to dream about what shape the cathedral we’re building should take.   This change in organizational culture, perhaps, is the most difficult of all our immediate tasks to contemplate and engage.  Nonetheless, it is a challenge we must face.  As the old canard suggests, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.  We must recognize that, to achieve different results, we must be willing to do almost anything and everything differently.

Years Four Through Ten – 2015

With a financial turnaround underway, the College can then turn its attention to launching initiatives that will begin to make real the substance of the vision.  An initial listing of categories and specific initiatives:

Academically …

We will aggressively seek funding for named schools to replace the five existing divisions: the “Named” School of Aeronautical Science, the “Named” School of Engineering, the “Named” School of Business and Management, the “Named” School of Information Sciences and Technology, and the “Named” School of Applied Social Science.  Each will have state-of-the-art classrooms and lab spaces, offices for faculty and community open space to encourage collaboration.

We will reinvent general education to permeate the curriculum of the College such that general education serves the core competencies a graduate requires in today’s and tomorrow’s global workforce and creating modules of interdisciplinary learning experiences to teach those competencies.

We will seek at least one endowed chair for each of the named schools with the expectation that the recipients will either bring with them or create at the College “centers of excellence” subsidized by extramural funding and focusing on advancing our core competencies in the four named schools.

We will grow the numbers of full-time and adjunct faculty to handle increasing workloads and a greater diversity of faculty responsibilities; develop models of quality and accountability assurance; place a greater responsibility on curriculum development, currency, and scholarship with the full-time faculty; and, develop delivery methods and the quality recruitment processes and training necessary for greater utilization of first-rate adjunct faculty.

We will create for our students a learning environment that mirrors the careers they will enter … a global workforce that emphasizes and celebrates multicultural diversity.

Operationally …

We will grow the College, to capacity at the undergraduate level on the Nashua campus, exponentially in Graduate and Continuing Studies as more interdisciplinary degree and training programs respond to the marketplace.

We will explore the creation of a distributed network of teaching and learning centers that are strategically placed in dense concentrations of the workforce for the four named schools.  This will, of course, require licensure in states outside of New Hampshire.

We will invest to provide more technology-enabled and delivered programs, elevating Daniel Webster College from a local provider to a national provider of select programs.

We will explore the addition of various “affiliated operations” to the core mission of the College, such as advanced aviation training, executive programs, and consulting services for the sectors we serve.

We will generate sufficient surplus revenue from our operations to continuously reinvest each year in core activities.

By 2015

The College has essentially reinvented itself.  It has done more than merely survive; it has thrived over the course of ten years.  Physical appearances aside – with a physical plant that has transformed the campus – Daniel Webster College is an altogether different place.  It is intellectually stimulating in all respects; it is a center of culture for the greater Nashua community; it is viewed by major corporations as a solutions provider and an institution of choice for professional workforce development.  We attract some of the brightest students in the nation who want a small college experience without giving up the intellectual and vital feel of larger institutions.  We attract working professionals on a fast track to success who recognize that we will give them an educational edge in promotion.  In so doing, we have become relevant and valuable to those who are best able to help us gain that margin of excellence.