Richard L. Torgerson, President

AUGUST 25, 2011

Welcome to the start of a new academic year in this historic 150-year anniversary of Luther College.

Thanks to a terrific sesquicentennial planning group  (will you please stand Sherry Alcock, Mike Blair, Tanya Gertz, Tim Peter, Ann Sponberg Peterson, Rachel Vagts, Greg Vanney, Rob Larson, Jeff Dintaman and Karen Martin-Schramm)  we have marked the college’s 150th birthday in marvelous ways, including the addition of Bentdahl Commons to our campus, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, the world premier of Luther Mass, two theatre works—“Luther Sketches” and the History Walk, a Family Fun Festival for staff and faculty and a 150-kilometer relay race from Luther’s birthplace in Wisconsin to the Regents Center. And there are more events to come as we anticipate an Oct. 13 royal visit by the King and Queen of Norway, a blowout Homecoming weekend, the commissioning of the Luther College Wind Turbine, and the release of a new Luther history thanks to the hard work of Will Bunge, Mary Hull Mohr, Dale Nimrod and Greg Vanney. 

It’s a good thing major anniversaries occur only once every 50 years because they are all-consuming. Thanks to all of you who have gone above and beyond to make it a signature year. The only thing that could have made it a bit more stressful is to have the leader of the free world decide to roll into town! Thank you Kris Franzen, Keith Christensen, Steve Arneson, Gary Brickman and everyone else who were at the beck and call of the Secret Service and the White House staff for several long days this month.  

As we enter a new year we find exciting transition across the campus. There are many new faculty and staff to get to know, and we welcome new leadership in Career Services, the Book Shop, and the Dean’s Office. We welcome all of you and are eager to work with you.

Reflecting on the year past there is much to celebrate beyond the sesquicentennial highlights. These include:

·      An annualized endowment return of 19.1 percent, gift income reaching more than $8 million for the year, and the Sesquicentennial Fund surpassing the $40 million mark and moving steadily toward our $50 million goal. Given the economic climate in which we find ourselves this is fantastic progress.

·      We’ve made great progress in marketing and visibility, with an increasingly robust and attractive website, new strategies with social media and video production, and growing visibility in central Iowa through what we are calling the “I-35 corridor” initiative, including a significant well received first-ever presence at the Iowa State Fair.  

·      Another successful audit confirmed a year-end operating surplus of 1.6 percent, enabling us to provide a summer salary supplement to faculty and staff, replace the CFL chiller, address unanticipated piping system problems in the Miller Hall renovation, repair the Farwell bridge, replace the chairs in the CFL Recital Hall, support the aquatic center project, and add to the quasi-endowment for operations. 

·      The past year brought a strong external affirmation of the Paideia program accompanied by a marketing study to better tell the Paideia story in new and compelling ways; a revealing assessment of curriculum navigation by 2011 graduating seniors led by Jeff Wilkerson and the Assessment Committee that will inform future curricular planning; and steady progress on a Course Evaluation Form that recognizes the centrality of our Student Learning Goals.

·      Luther was also recognized as a top producer of Fulbright awards, we achieved a #10 ranking in the number of students who study abroad; and we enjoyed significant collective success on the part of our athletic teams winning the Iowa Conference All-Sports Trophy and our Ultimate and Mock Trial team that competed nationally.

·      Finally, the past year involved non-stop work to bring in this year’s entering class of 678 students—27 over the Fall 2010 total—thanks to the diligent Admissions and Financial Aid team and the faculty and staff who do such a marvelous job at presenting Luther as an attractive and compelling place to learn and grow.

This is a good list and represents a significant investment of time by many of you in this room. If the performance of a college were measured by the willingness of faculty and staff to step up and do what needs to be done Luther’s scores would be off the chart. Thank you for your commitment.

Over this past year a group of nine individuals (I call them Task Group—or TG—150 “Survivors”) have given much time, thought, and energy to thinking about Luther’s future. These individuals met almost weekly throughout the year. I want them to stand and be recognized for their good work:  Victoria Christman, Nick Preus, Kelly Wedmann, Greg Peterson, Arleen Orvis, David Vasquez, Brad Miller, and Jon Christy.

Task Group 150 was created in our sesquicentennial year at the urging of the Board of Regents to determine if Luther is using its resources in the most effective way as we reflect on the past and anticipate opportunities and challenges. Through careful and prudent planning over the past decade, Luther has been adept at responding to demographic and economic challenges, which in some ways reduces the sense of urgency to do differently. Unlike many colleges and universities, it has not been necessary to implement extreme or severe measures to operate effectively.  

Mindful of past success, TG 150 has nevertheless wrestled with unsettling future net revenue projections if we were to simply stay the course and continue merrily along. We live with the constant tension between the important and the unimportant, between the long-term strategy and the immediate, easily-done task. Again, we have been able to do this discernment from a position of strength, not in the context of some fiscal crisis.

It has been challenging to determine how best to place Task Group 150 deliberations in the context of  our day-to-day work. It was during one of my frequent Barnes and Noble browsing expeditions where I found an idea. (Those of you who have heard my State of the College speeches over the past decade know I frequently focus on a choice “word”—though I hope this is not akin to Steven Colbert’s “The Word!”  So get ready….) Anyway, I encountered a book by economist John Kay entitled, Obliquity. Kay asserts we rarely know enough about the complexity of important problems to tackle them head-on and arrive with a single solution. But we can learn about our objectives and how to achieve them through a gradual process of risk-taking and discovery. This, Kay says, is obliquity.

In his view the achievement of the great statesman is not to reach the best decision fastest but to mediate effectively among competing views and values. The achievement of the successful business leader is not to foresee the future accurately but to continuously match organizational capability to the changing market. And, the test of financial prudence is to mitigate risk as one navigates successfully thorough irresolvable uncertainties—anyone monitoring the stock market the last month?

It is my belief that TG 150 has approached its work and developed its recommendations obliquely. Our choices and recommendations arise from a limited range of options—it is unlikely Luther will become a college of 2,600 nor a college of 2,200. We are committed to being a residential liberal arts college grounded in the Lutheran faith. Excellence in teaching and scholarship, nurturing diversity and a strong sense of community, and supporting music, athletics, the arts, global learning and environmental stewardship remain central to who we are. 

Our knowledge of the relevant information we would like to have is imperfect and limited: What will our annualized endowment growth be, and is there a cost structure tipping point beyond which families will seek other places for their college experience? There are no silver bullets or pat answers to achieve all that we desire. Obliquity is perhaps the best approach when complex organizations evolve in an uncertain environment and when the effect of our actions depends on the way in which others respond to them.

Task Group 150 has challenged academic and non-academic programs to think about positioning for the future with well-defined benchmarks for success. We have proposed a budget strategy tied to enrollment goals, defined by current assumptions and historical achievements. This budget strategy will require some cost reductions, and we have sought to identify such reductions. And we have suggested new ideas and actions for investment. There is no single model or narrative for Luther’s future that could account for the uncertainty and complexity of the world in which we live. TG 150 has developed 45 recommendations.  Some examples include:

·      Seeking more opportunities to link existing, courses, programs, and personnel in ways that enrich interdisciplinary learning.

·      Making the Goals for Student Learning a part of telling the Luther story by incorporating them into advising sessions and the ROAD experience of first-year students.

·      Replacing retiring faculty and staff selectively allocating these resources where they are most needed or not at all.

·      Revitalizing or phasing out programs that do not meet specified benchmarks for credit-hour production, number of graduates, and centrality to the college’s defining characteristics.

·      Keeping faculty and staffing ratios in-line with projected revenue to ensure our workforce is fairly compensated for good work in fulfilling the college’s mission.    

These are not onerous recommendations. They reflect best practice in an increasingly competitive and uncertain environment. We now seek your thoughts and perspectives as we bring the reflective and discernment part of the TG 150 experience to a close. A working draft of the TG 150 documents will be posted on Katie early next week. Look for September forums to discuss these recommendations. The goal is to give a final report to the Board of Regents in October.

Let me outline three key initiatives for the coming year which arise out of the TG 150 process and deliberations:

First, a re-defining of financial aid awarding strategies.

Our goal is to ensure that capable students from all income groups and backgrounds continue to enroll, persist, and succeed at Luther and provide sufficient net revenue to continue providing compelling learning experiences. With assistance of an outside firm, we have thoroughly analyzed our financial aid awarding practices and yield results for the past four years. Financial aid awarding practices and processes must be streamlined to respond to the federal mandate that each institution have a net price calculator available on its web site by October 2011. This means that any family can self-determine an approximate aid award given family history, finances, and eligibility for Luther scholarship levels. 

Luther, like many private colleges, is increasingly challenged by public institutions. For the first time, five large public universities are now in our top-ten list of overlap institutions. Developing a clear data-driven awarding strategy for new students will help build demand from all populations, reduce the need for manual packaging, and move Luther toward the transparency required by the advent of the net price calculator. But, in the end, the attractiveness of Luther must be the many learning opportunities beyond an attractive financial aid offer. Whether these opportunities are academic, social, athletic, performance-related, or experiential they must speak to the students’ desire for added value.  

A second goal relates to interdisciplinary learning. How can Luther find even more ways to become a laboratory for imagination and collaboration to bring about transformation?

Highly motivated and accomplished students tend to be passionate about ideas and opportunities that may not fit neatly into existing departmental structures. To successfully attract these students, we must be able to demonstrate that Luther provides opportunities that cross traditional academic boundaries. This is something public institutions can’t do well. We need to continually to affirm that, rightly envisioned, disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning have common cause. Disciplines need a wider context in which to discern and judge their efforts, and cross-departmental programs need strong disciplines to prosper.  

The liberal arts experience remains the best place for students to learn to think, to communicate, and to collaborate. In these times, the liberal arts experience must also provide connections—across disciplines, across cultures, across the divide of the campus and the larger world.  Paideia has the potential to be the Luther framework for making important connections, but it should not be its only expression. In the “middle”—between Paideia I and Paideia II—there should be continually forming and re-forming experiences defined and grounded by a passion for exploration and discovery across departmental lines. Through this liberal arts experience coupled with Luther’s commitment to engage and transform the whole person by encouraging a dialog between the Christian faith and the world of ideas we are asking students to use all of their gifts, not just their mind or their heart.

Lastly, I call on all of you to help sustain Luther’s mission and the soul of this community.  

The soul of a college is transmitted through the people who constitute the institution, primarily the faculty and staff. How do we sustain the essence and spirit of community, a hallmark of Luther, in the face of significant transition taking place?

I contend that community is sustained when we gather together, but the gathering of community is increasingly problematic. Whether a lecture or concert, a faculty meeting or morning coffee, a worship service, chapel, or an athletic event, participation is a challenge. Our busy-ness, the ubiquity of electronic communication, and the individualism of our culture are all contributors to the dilemma. Luther is distinctive in our practice of setting aside 30 minutes each morning for community time. A time when stories are told, faith is expressed, history is remembered, and traditions are nourished. Classes, meetings, and regular activities are not to be scheduled during this time. If you choose not to go to chapel to nourish your spirit, I encourage you to use this time to meet a student or a colleague. Gathering together builds unity and coherence and contributes to living out our mission.

What makes the mission of this place so compelling is that its soul, its ethos is carried out in the life of the community. In April 2000 as we were launching our first strategic planning effort, Paul Dovre, president emeritus of Concordia College said this to us:

Lutheran places differ from secular academic communities because they see  staff, students, teachers, and constituents as members of one body, differing in roles, interdependent in function, and united in spirit, an entirely different image than that of a community defined merely by shared geography, procedures, expectations, and codes of conduct. For Lutheran colleges, the communitarian ethic has a specific locus in the biblical and confessional traditions. This means we lean against the wind of expressive individualism and utilitarianism, we are attentive to the welfare of each person and the health of the whole, and we are concerned about virtue, compassion, and justice, not for the sake of annual crime reports but for the sake of the soul.

Luther College has grown from a tiny classroom of Norwegian students and one professor to a stable and proud liberal arts college that lives its mission with great integrity. We must continue to strive for excellence in all we do so that future generations of students will be “transformed by their journey” at Luther College, empowered to lead and serve on behalf of the common good. And our greatest strength, 150 years ago and today, is the community of people who invest over and over in Luther’s faith and learning mission. I thank each of you for joining me in this noble and vital calling. 

Soli Deo Gloria.