|
President's Update
September 20, 2007
Welcome to the Fall Semester at Pacific Oaks College! Thank you for being here and for all that you do to strengthen the Pacific Oaks community.
We are embarking on a path that will promote, encourage, and support excellence at Pacific Oaks College. It is in this spirit of excellence that I am delighted to announce the College has been awarded $100,000 by the Ralph J. Parsons Foundation to support scholarships for this coming year. Additionally, the Fletcher Jones Foundation has recognized our diverse student body by featuring the College in its annual report. Our faculty and staff continue to be dedicated to teaching students to be equipped for careers in human development, marriage and family therapy, and teaching. Indeed, this is an exciting time at Pacific Oaks College.
You may have heard someone question whether the College will close. The answer is no--on the contrary, the Board and I are determined to make it stronger. In fact, members of the faculty and administration have spent the summer planning the future for the College we love.
Our challenge, which was brought into sharp focus last spring, is common to many small private colleges. To keep tuition affordable, we must make our operations more business-like while remaining true to our mission. We will accomplish this by doing the following:
As you may know, last spring the College discovered that, in the academic centers, projections for growth in enrollment and net revenue were unreliable. When we learned that the centers would produce significant financial risk, the Board and I put those centers on hold to preserve the integrity of the College. The revised projections based on new data indicated a threat to the College's finances, but our current financial status is sound. This means that we must change our operating policies now because, with off-campus centers on hold, we cannot rely on them to produce the revenue stream for which we had planned.
All this work will be done through a regular governance process, mostly by committees, involving multiple constituencies including the Board of Trustees, faculty (through its representatives and as a whole), administration, other staff and students. In order to assure that we have the best thinking available, some of our work will be informed by expert advisors. We have already had a consultant review our financial aid procedures and have made changes. We have just hired a consultant to work with a faculty committee on academic program reviews and student learning.
We are committed to keeping Pacific Oaks the vital force for changing lives that it had always been. We welcome your involvement and ideas making the College an even better place for those who want to serve children and families.
I look forward to working with you.
With warm regards,
Carolyn Denham, Ph.D.
8/9/2007 - President's Update
| |
