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A Periodic Review
of Ideas and Issues in
Education Marketing

THE
LAWLOR
REVIEW
SPRING 2007
VO LU M E X V • N U M B E R 2

To Te s t o r N o t
t o Te s t
Examining the Role of
Standardized Testing in Education
Page 3

Interview
Michael Wesch
Page 10

Leader, Marketer,
Vi s i o n a r y,
Fund Raiser
College Presidents
in Academia Today
Page 17
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THE
LAWLOR L E T T E R F R O M T H E E D I T O R
REVIEW
VOLUME XV, NUMBER 2
Diverse Discussions
Publisher John T. Lawlor Recently I overheard two moms comparing notes about how to help their children
Editor Virginia R. Buege prepare for some test taking: extra sleep, a fortified breakfast and canceling swim
Contributing Writers Kris Berggren, lessons for the week were in order, according to one of the parents. Hearing them
Virginia R. Buege, Christine Stern
Layout Lynn Clayson talk brought to mind my own SAT and GRE testing experiences … until their
Project Management Kristen conversation resumed and I realized they actually were talking about their third-
Kokkinen, Will Dudzinski
Business Manager Molly Schomburg graders and the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test.
Copy Editing Carole Arwidson, While the MAP hardly seems as significant a test as the SAT, these parents’
Amy Foster
Letters & Commentary apprehension about their children’s success underscores the emphasis placed on—
The Lawlor Review invites readers to submit
letters and commentary about articles in this and the anxiety caused by—standardized tests at all levels. And our “obsession”
issue or on topics related to education
marketing. Editorial correspondence should with testing isn’t likely to disappear, according to veteran writer Chris Stern.
be no more than 500 words and include your
name, job title and organizational affiliation.
Her story, “To Test or Not to Test: Examining the Role of Standardized Testing
The Lawlor Review reserves the right to edit in Education,” looks into the history behind testing in America as well as the
letters and commentary and makes no
guarantee that submitted materials will be politics of the growing test-optional movement.
published. Please send all editorial
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by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any Also in this issue, you’ll find an interesting Q & A with Michael Wesch,
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Environmental Considerations phenomenon of technology. His digital ethnography work group is studying Web
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the opinions of The Lawlor Review staff.

Virginia R. Buege

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Recent national media attention has thrust the standardized testing

debate into the mainstream. Critics condemn it as biased, inaccurate and
unfair, yet the Commission on the Future of Higher Education has
suggested that testing college graduates to measure achievement might
be in order. What’s going on here? Is there any consensus? We look at the
role of standardized testing in K-12, and hear from higher-ed institutions
as widely divergent as Pitzer College and MIT about how and why they
made their admission-test decisions. We share insights from experts on
all sides of the issue and offer a glimpse into the possible future of
standardized testing in American education.

T O T ES T O R N O T T O T E S T
E x a m i n i n g t h e R o l e o f S t a n d a r d i z e d Te s t i n g i n E d u c at i o n
by Christine Stern

A Two-Way Trend Since NAR, the federal plea to

? ??
By some estimates, Americans in educators has been to show
schools, workplaces and the military
take 600 million standardized tests
a year. Our interest in—some say
???
?
accountability. The Peabody
report ties standardized testing
to accountability as a method of
“obsession with”—testing can be ? ?? measuring school performance.
Nevertheless, the Peabody authors
???
traced to the Reagan administration’s
1983 report “A Nation at Risk” and state that while NAR referred to

resulting federal studies that found
high rates of illiteracy and low
average standardized test scores for
American students relative to those
in other industrialized nations. Faced
with a weak national economy
and burgeoning commercial and
technological competition from
abroad, the federal government
became a driving force in education
that’s been steadily accelerating
ever since.
In 2003, Vanderbilt University’s
Peabody Center for Education
(Nashville, Tennessee) published a
20-year re-appraisal of “A Nation at
?
Risk” (NAR). It observes that the
greatest legacy of NAR might be the
raising of standards in education. High
school graduation requirements, more
stringent course content and other
standards-based policies, such as the
current administration’s No Child Left
Behind law, are commonplace today.
test scores as “evidence” of school
failure, there was no suggestion at
the time that more testing would
solve any part of the problem.
Bob Schaeffer has been attacking
standardized testing for more than
20 years as the public education
director of FairTest: The National
Center for Fair & Open Testing. He
points out that the organization is not
“The National Center for No Testing,”
as some suppose. “If kids believe that
silly-odd bubbles and essays on
Saturday morning mean more than
grades in courses—which, of course,
include a lot of tests,” says Schaeffer,

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“… then let ’em take tests. But what
we’re opposed to is the high-stakes
misuse of tests as the sole or primary
factor in making major educational
decisions, such as admission,
graduation, promotion, school rating,
reward and punishment. [In contrast,]
we have explicitly advocated in the
K-12 level for a comprehensive
assessment system that includes
tests as one factor.”
Schaeffer marvels that K-12
and higher education are steadily
moving away from one another
when it comes to a reliance on
tests. In elementary and secondary
schools, he sees education
being driven by high-stakes
standardized tests mandated by
the federal government. “As a
result,” he says, “we have seen
curriculum, teaching and learning
narrowed to the content of
those tests.” On the other hand,
Schaeffer notes that at the
university admission level, educators
determine their testing policies
according to the particular missions of
their institutions. “[That] trend has been
in the other direction,” he says, “as more
and more colleges have adopted test-
optional admissions for all or significant
portions of their applicant pools.”
From the Bottom Up
Susan Smartt, Ph.D., senior research
associate at Vanderbilt’s National
Comprehensive Center for Teacher
Quality, has worked as a classroom
teacher, school psychologist and
consultant to state departments of
education. “I’m a supporter [of
standardized testing] from the
perspective of No Child Left Behind,”
she says. “The standardized testing that
has come from that initiative has raised
the focus of people who until now have
not paid attention to children from low-
performing populations. Because of it,
we are now providing more services to
those children. Like anything else,
© The Lawlor Review
standardized testing can be abused
and misused, but I think the fact that
more teachers are [engaged] and the
test scores are going up is for the
greater good.”
Smartt endorses the appropriate use
of standardized formative assessments,
such as DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of
Basic Early Literacy Skills) and CBM
“But what we’re opposed to is the
high-stakes misuse of tests as the
sole or primary factor in making
major educational decisions, such
as admission, graduation,
promotion, school rating, reward
and punishment.”
—BOB SCHAEFFER
Director of FairTest: The National Center
for Fair & Open Testing
(Curriculum-Based Measurement),
because, she says, “that’s the type of
assessment that informs instruction.”
With formative assessments, teachers
screen children to identify their
learning needs, implement instruction
and monitor progress to see if the
instruction has been effective. If so,
students move on. If not, instruction
is intensified or modified.
For Judy Ivie Burton, president
and CEO of Alliance for College-
Ready Public Schools (Los Angeles,
California), the bottom line is
standardized testing. “We have to
market what we’re doing and recruit
students,” she says. “And you can only
do that if you’ve got results to show,
because people are making a choice
about whether or not to come to
your school.”
The Alliance is a nonprofit
organization that manages high-
performing charter public schools
in historically underachieving, low-
income and overcrowded communities.
[ 4 ]
Its ambitious mission is to dramatically
reduce the school dropout rate to less
than 10 percent; to raise proficiency on
state academic standards; to achieve
100 percent success on high school exit
exams; and to prepare every student to
be successful in college. “No matter
what instructional materials we use,”
says Burton, “they’re aligned to state
standards. Our belief is that if
kids never have an opportunity
to learn grade-level appropriate
material at a rigorous level, there’s
no reason to expect that they’re
going to perform at those levels.”
The student retention rate at
Alliance schools for 2006-07 is
98 percent, and each one has a
waiting list. “The good news,”
says Burton, “is that for all four
schools that have data, they all
outperformed the neighboring
school in the target community.”
Nearly 80 percent of College-
Ready 10th graders passed the
California high school exit exam in
2006, two years before graduation.
Common Ground
In some states, secondary and
higher-ed institutions are collaborating
through standardized testing. In
California, the Early Assessment
Program (EAP) is a joint effort of the
California Department of Education,
the state’s public schools and the
California State University system
(CSU). According to CSU, more than
60 percent of the nearly 40,000 first-
year students admitted annually require
remedial education in math, English or
both. The EAP, a voluntary exam for
11th graders, can provide struggling
students with a heads-up that they need
more preparation for college.
The ACT, a curriculum-based
college-entrance exam, is mandated
in Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky and
Michigan high schools to measure
achievement on state standards, says Jon
Erickson, vice president for educational
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services at the Iowa testing company.
“Wyoming is implementing the test,”
he adds, “and there are several other
states in a serious discussion mode.
[At first] we thought it was [only] some
isolated instances, but it’s definitely a
trending process right now.”
A side benefit of using the ACT in
this context is that students appear to be
motivated to take it and to do their
best because they receive something
of value that can be used in the
college admission process. In
Illinois, the ACT requirement has
been credited for greater interest
and enrollment in state colleges.
Alphabet Soup
Long considered synonymous
with college entrance, the SAT is
the nation’s most widely used
admission exam. Its parent, the
College Board, characterizes the
SAT as a test that “measures the
kind of reasoning skills needed for
college by assessing how students apply
what they have learned in school.” On
the other hand, the ACT describes its
test as “not an aptitude or IQ test.
Instead, the questions on the ACT are
directly related to what students have
learned in high school courses in
English, mathematics and science.”
In its “State of College Admission
2006,” the National Association for
College Admission Counseling
(NACAC) reports that standardized
admission tests rank after grades in
college-prep courses as the second-most-
important factor in the college admission
decision. Of the colleges surveyed, 87.8
percent give test scores “moderate” to
“considerable” importance. According
to NACAC, on average, 61 percent of
enrolled first-year students submitted
SAT scores for admission to college and
50 percent submitted ACT scores.
Students who enrolled in private, four-
year colleges with high selectivity and
low yield were the most likely to submit
their SAT scores.
© The Lawlor Review
Because the two tests are scored
differently—with a top score on the
ACT being a 36 and the equivalent on
the SAT being 2400—some schools
attempt to convert an ACT score to an
SAT, or vice-versa. As of this year’s
entering classes, the University of
California has gone a step further and
developed its own “UC Score,” which
In its “State of College
Admission 2006,” the
National Association for College
Admission Counseling
(NACAC) reports that
standardized admission tests
rank after grades in
college-prep courses as the
second-most-important factor in
the college admission decision.
combines either standardized test score
with grades in 15 college-prep courses
to determine eligibility for admission
and scholarships.
“They are different tests,” maintains
Carol Rowlands, director of admissions
at Lafayette College (Easton,
Pennsylvania). “It’s unfortunate that
there’s even a scale that equates the two,
because they’re really not the same
thing. I believe that to a greater degree,
the ACT is measuring what a student
has learned, versus ability in certain
areas. I think they both have value.”
“I’ve spent 15 years urging students
to take the ACT, not necessarily instead
of, but in addition to, the SAT,” says
independent college advisor Carol
Goodell, Ph.D. (San Mateo, California).
“In my opinion, it offers advantages
because of the kind of test it is.” She
explains that in addition to giving a
composite score, the ACT provides
subtest scores in four subject areas,
including science. If some subtest scores
stand out, it offers better insight into a
[ 5 ]
student’s strengths and weaknesses.
“That’s especially relevant,” she says,
“for students from families in which
spoken English is not standard and for
bi- and trilingual students.”
College counselor Brad MacGowan,
Ed.D., from Newton North High School
(Newton, Massachusetts), says, “I feel
that standardized tests are overused
and misused, and we’ve lost all
perspective on them … More
people are realizing there are a
lot of problems with the SAT.”
MacGowan speaks out against
the unwieldy length and format
of the new SAT and issues of
socioeconomic, racial and ethnic
bias. “And now, the scoring errors
have brought a lot of it to the
forefront even more,” he continues.
He says that people who used to
think of the SAT as a “necessary
evil” are now saying that it might
be “an unnecessary evil.”
For further evidence,
MacGowan refers to scattergrams
generated by Naviance, a company
offering web-based college-counseling
tools to participating high schools. “If
you look at the scattergrams,” he says,
“you can see that GPA and the SAT
are pretty highly correlated with each
other…. If they’re measuring the same
thing, let kids work on their courses
and not on the SAT. It takes up way
more real estate than it deserves.”
The Growing List
By FairTest’s latest count, 730 U.S.
colleges and universities are more or
less test-optional in their admission
processes. Doubters argue that the
number is inflated dramatically with
for-profit and specialized institutions
with low or no admission standards
other than the ability to pay.
College counselor MacGowan
counters, “If you’re going to list SAT-
optional schools, you’ve got to list them
all. If East Podunk Bible College is
SAT-optional, I don’t think it would be
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right not to put them on the list. A lot
of them are not that competitive, but
they’re still educational institutions.”
Nine institutions were added to the
list in late 2004-05 and 13 in 2006.
Some, such as the University of
Colorado system, are test-optional only
for in-state students in the top 10
percent of their high school class who
are applying to certain UC college
programs. Others, such as George
Mason University (Fairfax, Virginia),
waive standardized tests for applicants
with at least a 3.5 GPA who rank in the
top 20 percent of their class.
George Mason receives about 13,000
applications each year for its incoming
class of nearly 2,300 students. It may
be the largest public university to
permit high school seniors with strong
academic records to apply without
standardized test scores. After three
years of study, GMU concluded that
standardized test scores are a “weak
predictor” of collegiate success for
high-achieving students. There is no
guarantee of admission, however.
Non-submitters, who must provide two
additional letters of recommendation,
are still evaluated by the admission
committee. “It’s not revolutionary,” says
Andrew Flagel, dean of admissions.
“It’s an evolutionary step. It fits where
universities are already going.”
Among the five “best” liberal arts
colleges on the test-optional list, based
on U.S. News & World Report’s 2006
ranking of the top 100, #5 Middlebury
College (Middlebury, Vermont) states
on its web site that “test scores are an
important part of our [admission]
process, because they allow us to compare
students from all over the world who
attend thousands of different secondary
schools.” Middlebury applicants, as well
as applicants to #17 Hamilton College
(Clinton, New York), who choose not
to send ACT or SAT I scores must
submit three tests in different subject
areas chosen from SAT Subject Tests,
Advanced Placement (AP) or
International Baccalaureate (IB) exams.
Submission of SAT and ACT scores
has been fully optional at #7 Bowdoin
College (Brunswick, Maine) for 30
years. About 20-25 percent of recent
entering classes decided not to send
standardized test scores. At #23 Bates
College (Lewiston, Maine), such scores
have been optional since 1984. Both
colleges ask for scores after admission—
Bowdoin for use in academic counseling
and placement; Bates, solely for
research. At #24 Mount Holyoke (South
Hadley, Massachusetts), standardized
tests have been optional since 2001.
FairTest’s Bob Schaeffer sees three
key factors contributing to a recent
surge in the test-optional movement:
1) convincing research from test-optional
schools that shows that test scores are not
necessary to predict academic success in
college, particularly the 20-year study
out of Bates College and the five-year
data from Mount Holyoke; 2) a loss of
College Board and SAT credibility due to
a questionable revision and expansion of

B e e n Th e r e , D o n e Th at
by Christine Stern

who has worked in Lafayette admissions since 1984 and

L afayette College (Easton, Pennsylvania) may be the
only college in the nation to have gone from requiring
applicants to submit standardized test scores to making
them optional to requiring them again. A test-optional
trial launched by Lafayette in 1994 did not achieve its
desired results and even created some apparent confusion
in the marketplace.
Barry McCarty, who recently retired as Lafayette’s
dean of enrollment services, recalls that their fundamental
objective was to enhance the intellectual climate on
campus. “We had hoped that we were going to see more
high-achieving students who might have been intimidated
by their standardized test performance,” he says.
“I think there are certain subgroups of candidates for
whom that might be true,” says Carol Rowlands, current
director of admissions, “[such as] students in under-
represented ethnic groups, as well as women.” Rowlands,
became director in ’98, remembers a lively test-optional
discussion among faculty and administrators. “There were
people on both sides of the fence,” she says. “It came to a
faculty vote, and it did pass, but it wasn’t an overwhelming
majority. It was passed as a five-year experiment. The
faculty were not prepared to say that this is a done deal.
They wanted the opportunity to evaluate the impact of the
policy and examine it over time.”
During the test-optional period, Lafayette did not
consider SAT or ACT scores during the admission process,
but did ask withholders to submit their scores after
admission. “We were getting some very good and reliable
data,” says McCarty, and he called in two statistics-
oriented professors in the department of psychology to
study it. A quantitative review showed that students who
had not submitted standardized test scores performed in

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the test in 2005 and a subsequent drop
in test scores; and 3) “the major dust-up”
surrounding SAT scoring errors last year.
In All Fairness
Jane B. Brown, Mount Holyoke’s
vice president for enrollment and college
relations, says that the women’s college
had been questioning the value of
standardized testing as far back as the
’80s. “There was concern about judging
students’ potential on such a singular
formula,” she says, and uneasiness about
an increasing susceptibility to coaching
as the years went by. “Therefore, those
students who had more resources, better
preparation, and so on, had an advantage.”
But “the tipping point,” according to
Brown, was the publication in 1999 of
The Big Test, by Nicholas Lemann, a
penetrating look at the history and
implications of the SAT. “That caused us
to reopen the conversation,” she says.
“We believed, with the thorough
reading of applications that we do, that
we were in a position to make good
decisions without using standardized
tests,” says Brown. “The message we
really wanted to send to students was
that we care more in the admission
process about academic achievement
over a four-year period, and we see the
SAT as a fairly blunt instrument that
doesn’t give us the full measure of
various kinds of skills and potentials.”
Research supported by the Mellon
Foundation established that the
difference in college performance
over time between SAT and ACT
submitters and non-submitters was
inconsequential. Brown says that the
size, quality and diversity of their
applicant pool remain strong.
About 60 percent of Mount Holyoke
applicants still submit their scores.
“What’s been very interesting to us,”
says Brown, “is that while the majority
of students who don’t submit would
have lower scores—that’s a no-
brainer—there are any number of
students whose scores are well above our
mean who choose not to submit them,
on principle. Those are students we’re
delighted to have in our pool!”
Pitzer College (Claremont,
California) exempts students graduating
in the top 10 percent of their class and
those with an unweighted GPA of 3.5
or higher from having to submit any
standardized tests. Applicants not
meeting that criteria may choose
from options that include ACT, SAT,
specified AP and IB exams or examples
of recent high-level coursework that
includes the assignments, teacher’s
comments and grades.
Arnaldo Rodriguez, Ed.D.,
Pitzer’s vice president of admission and
financial aid, says that the school’s 2002
decision to become test-optional was
based on egalitarianism. “Here was
Pitzer College,” says Rodriguez, “with
this huge commitment to diversity—
racial, ethnic and all kinds of other
ways—and we were asking people to

college at a slightly lower level, as measured by GPA,
than did their classmates. “We did a very comprehensive
[investigation] of the value of having the SAT,” says
McCarty, “and in the final analysis it was not a dramatic
benefit, but on the margin, it enhanced our predictive
ability.”
He adds, “We’ve always done a holistic review, and the
SATs were never given undue influence here, so it’s not
surprising that our decision-making wouldn’t be very
different with optional SATs, and it wasn’t.” But it was
surprising to McCarty and others that more than a few
families of high-ability students assumed that Lafayette
could not be an academically serious institution if
admission tests were optional. “We detected a perception
that we couldn’t be that selective, when in fact, we were
very selective,” he laments. At that time, Lafayette was
ranked among the top third of national liberal arts colleges
listed in U.S. News & World Report—and still is in 2007.
During the experiment, Lafayette’s applicant pool grew
in size, quality and diversity, but Rowlands attributes
those changes more to demographic influences and
admission marketing than to their test-optional policy.
The College did not experience a significant increase in
minority or high-ability applicants. “We certainly
attracted attention,” she says, “… but more often than not,
[those who did not submit their scores] were mediocre
test-takers who weren’t necessarily the highest-achieving
students—based on their [high school] GPA and selection
of courses.”
Lafayette continues to review applications using a
holistic approach that does not place disproportionate
weight on standardized test scores. But Rowlands does see
situations where scores become a critical evaluation tool.
She says, “It’s one thing to look at an applicant from a high
school where we receive a large number of applications
every year [and from which] we matriculate students
frequently. We can go back and say here’s what we did, and
this is how successful these students were at Lafayette.”
But in cases where a student’s high school is unfamiliar and
the application reveals “something you might consider a
risk,” Rowlands says she and her admission colleagues need
more details before they can make a determination. “There
are many, many ways to go about the selection process,”
she says, “but I think the more you know about a particular
candidate, the better informed you are in all aspects of
decision-making.”

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submit test scores, which in our
judgment are biased. That’s precisely
what we wanted to get away from.”
“One thing our actions have proven,”
adds Rodriguez, “is that we’ve been able
to maintain ethnic and racial diversity
[30-32 percent] and maintain or increase
the academic quality of the student body.
Some people say you can’t do both, but at
least in our case, we have.”
The Other Side
of the Coin
College Board spokesperson
Caron Scoropanos, M.Ed., says that
the inequity that exists in American
education is a very real problem.
Students from more privileged high
schools, who have access to better
teachers and resources, will find that
their standardized test scores reflect the
quality of their education. “There’s no
question that students who do not
receive the same ‘tool box’ are biased
against in our education system,” she
says. “The SAT does not cause that
inequity; it exists outside of the SAT.”
Scoropanos maintains that one of
the College Board’s highest priorities is
to ensure that the SAT is fair for all
students. “It’s the most researched test in
the world,” she says, and points out that
research reports are easily obtained on
their web site. A click on “For Educators”
and then “Research” brings up
internal and external studies on gender
differences; race, ethnicity and social
status; assessing the reliability of skills
measured by the SAT; the effects of
coaching; and more. She says that each
SAT question goes through at least four
content reviews; a sensitivity appraisal to
make sure that it’s fair in content and
tone for all students; and a statistical
review—Differential Item Functioning
(DIF)—that is used to compare how
subgroups of students perform on each
question. She explains, “If students from
different subgroups [e.g., males/females,
Asians/African Americans, etc.] who have
approximately equal knowledge and skill
© The Lawlor Review
perform in substantially different ways on
a test question, then no matter how many
content reviews it has already been
through, that question is discarded or
revised and reviewed again.”
Furthermore, Scoropanos says that
several procedures have been put in
place to prevent the kind of scoring
errors that occurred at one test site in
October 2005, which affected about 1
percent of all test-takers in that round
of the SAT. Because the problem was
traced to humidity, each answer sheet is
now acclimatized before scanning, and
it is examined with new software that
identifies paper expansion due to
humidity. In addition, each answer
sheet is now scanned twice, on different
days with different machines. “It was an
unfortunate, isolated incident,” says
Scoropanos, “but we feel very confident
we have addressed those issues so that it
will not happen in the future.”
By the Numbers
Where small admission cohorts are
being considered, some professionals
see a particular advantage gained from
standardized test scores. College advisor
Carol Goodell, who has worked
extensively with gifted and talented
students, indicates that they may be
difficult to evaluate. “Because they can
be self-driven, their interests tend to be
passionate, or they go off on tangents …
their homework may be happenstance.
Their grades don’t necessarily reflect
what they know about a subject; they
do reflect how diligent they are in
sticking with the system.” She says that
a high SAT score in math, for example,
from a student with a C+ in pre-
calculus can encourage a second look
from a college admission office.
Standardized testing also benefits a
cluster of students at Wheaton College
(Wheaton, Illinois), an academically
rigorous Christian college with an
enrollment of 2,400. “Even though
we’re a fairly small school,” says
Director of Admissions Shawn
[ 8 ]
Leftwich, “we have a decent-sized group
of students who’ve been home-schooled
[6-8 percent of the entering class].
Certainly for the home-school
population, the SAT and ACT have
been very helpful to us in giving us
something to compare their academic
performance to [when comparing them
to] other students who’ve applied.”
Marilee Jones, dean of admissions
at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (Cambridge), a scientist
by training, says she “holds out hope”
that someday MIT will make
standardized tests optional for
applicants. “But the math and science
[schools] are probably the last places
to want to do that, because these are
people who believe in numbers,” she
offers. “There’s a much more disparate
group of disciplines that make up
liberal arts schools and the people who
run them, and they’re probably far
more likely to just see numbers as
metaphors,” she adds with a laugh.
“Our brains are all different.”
Numbers are critical at MIT, and
Jones says that the admission staff needs
to be able to document for faculty that
they’re admitting the right people.
“It’s just so much easier to carry the day
when you have metrics like this.” She
says MIT counts on standardized test
scores because “it’s the one thing
everybody [12,500 applicants] has in
common. It’s some kind of equilibrator.”
Still, Jones sees a paradox: “We don’t
understand what those tests are testing.
You can say they’re testing a basic
knowledge of the material, but there are
plenty of kids who know the material
pretty well—they just can’t prove it on
a multiple-choice test. That tells me the
test really isn’t good for all kids.”
She wonders, “If we really don’t know
what the test is testing, why has our
culture given it so much power? The
test has become so important that it has
become embedded in the Standard &
Poor’s bond rating of a university—our
mean SAT scores affect our ability to
Spring 2007
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borrow money—and certain towns in
Massachusetts have higher property
values because the kids in those schools
have higher SAT scores.”
Colin Diver, president of Reed
College (Portland, Oregon), says he’s
a “believer” in standardized tests
though the College understands their
limitations and tries not to give them
undue weight in the admission process.
“Nonetheless, we feel as though they
provide valuable and useful insights
into student academic aptitude and
achievement,” he says. At the same
time, Reed refuses to provide any
numbers for U.S. News & World Report
rankings. “It’s all about truth in
advertising,” says Diver. He maintains
that being test-optional boosts the
mean score of a college’s entering class
and improves its position on the list.
“Once a few colleges adopt the tactic,”
he complains, “their competitors feel
pressure to follow suit, lest they suffer a
drop in rank. And so a new front opens
in the admissions arms race.”
Exit Poll
The Commission on the Future
of Higher Education, appointed by
Secretary of Education Margaret
Spellings, presented its findings
last fall after a year of hearings
and deliberations. Among other
recommendations, the panel called for
“a robust culture of accountability and
transparency” in the higher education
system that would reveal value added in
the college experience. Many in higher
education worry that could lead to a
standardized college “exit exam.”
Wheaton’s Shawn Leftwich isn’t
concerned. Her confidence in Wheaton
students seems to invite an outside
evaluation. She says, “Our students are
good test-takers. They come in with
good skills, and through our curriculum,
they continue to develop them. I’m sure
they would do fine. They do really well
on graduate school exams, so I believe
our educational process is strong.”
© The Lawlor Review
Barry McCarty, former dean of “The problem is, when we move in
enrollment services at Lafayette, the direction of standardized tests, we
suggests that post-graduate push schools into a kind of homogeneity
standardized tests, such as the GRE, the that I think would be unfortunate.”
MCAT and the LSAT already serve as He says that Reed, being a research-
exit exams. He postulates that if oriented institution, uses its junior
information from these exams could be qualifying exam and a required senior
collected comprehensively, correlated thesis to demonstrate proficiency. “We
with the undergraduate institutions of don’t shrink from the idea, in principle,
the test-takers and made available to of evaluating how students have done.
college applicants, their families and the In fact, we do it ourselves pretty
general public, it could add to the rigorously,” Diver explains. “But what I
evidence of the benefits of a given worry about is somebody coming along
institution. “If there’s some sort of with a one-size-fits-all standardized test
disciplined assessment of the experience of critical thinking and then using a No
that students have had, then that [school] Child Left Behind philosophy to impose
is going to be a known commodity.” it on everybody.”
“We certainly embrace the idea that To test or not to test? The jury is
we should be determining, as best we still out on that question. And it’s
can, the success of our educational anyone’s guess whether there will ever
programs,” says Reed’s President Diver. be a verdict.
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in-depth discussion led by some of the most digitally literate thought
leaders in the country, including:
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Senior Research Specialist, The Pew Internet & American Life Project
Understanding teen habits and preferences as both consumers and content creators
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Replicating authentic campus visit experiences for the stealth marketplace
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Exploring the mechanics of search engine marketing and the nuts and bolts
of Web 2.0 tactics
Student/Parent Panel
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[ 9 ] Spring 2007
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A n I n - D e p t h L o o k at t h e
Cyber Phenomenon of
O u r Ti m e : We b 2 . 0
by Virginia R. Buege

It’s not often that the terms “cultural anthropology” and “YouTube” come up in the same
conversation—until you talk with Michael Wesch, Ph.D., an assistant professor of cultural
anthropology at Kansas State University (Manhattan, Kansas). For Wesch, the field of cultural
anthropology has always been “a continuous exercise in expanding my mind and my empathy,
building primarily from one simple principle: everything is connected.” And, as Wesch sees it, the
medium of the Internet is connecting the global society in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways.
Influenced by media guru Marshall McLuhan, who once noted, “We shape our tools, and thereafter
our tools shape us,” Wesch has launched a digital ethnography study group at KSU. By exploring
not only the content of the World Wide Web but also the Web 2.0 tools used to create web content,
they are examining the impact of digital technology on human interactions.
The first outcome of the digital ethnography study group’s work was a short video called
“Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us,” which highlights the evolution of digital technology
and gives viewers a sense as to where it might be going. (Almost immediately after its release to
the web, this video became a viral hit; within one month, over 1.7 million people had viewed it.
To see the video for yourself, check the link on The Lawlor Group’s web site.)
For many of us, trying to keep up with the latest digital technology developments leaves little time
to consider the larger implications of something like the World Wide Web. In his interview with
The Lawlor Review, Michael Wesch helps us better understand the cultural shifts set in motion
by the digital revolution and also suggests that if we can take the time to examine digital
technology and its effects, we will gain even more insight into those who use it—like the
Millennials—and begin to develop more authentic relationships in a virtual world.
Q. You are an anthropologist, your interest in this area particularly drawn to the possibilities
and some of your research is develop? of using a combination of multiple
focused on the social and A. For almost 10 years now I have media to create a rich and engaging
cultural phenomenon of been interested in exploring and ethnography of my work in Papua New
technology, in particular extending the possibilities of digital Guinea. But while I was there I began
the impact of digital media to improve the ways scholars to see that media are not just tools we
technology on human convey their research to other scholars, use to communicate; as the media guru
interaction. How did students and the general public. I was Marshall McLuhan once noted, “We

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shape our tools, and thereafter our tools the relationship, not the individuals, book, their lives changed dramatically.
shape us.” I don’t buy into any strict that was important, so they were experts Anthropologist Edmund Carpenter
media determinism, but my experiences in human relationships. referred to media as “phantoms” because
in Papua New Guinea made me realize After I had been there for a couple they can cause dramatic changes while
that the media we create can have some years, a young man who had left the the people using them rarely take
powerful effects on us that are village years before to attend school on notice. People often focus on the
sometimes difficult content without
to recognize if one We tend to take for granted the number of ways different recognizing the
is not paying close broader impacts
attention. media are involved in our day-to-day lives, and it is being caused by
I lived in a only by witnessing life without these media that we the media itself.
relatively isolated When I
village in Papua begin to recognize their significance. returned home
New Guinea for 18 in 2003, I was
months over the course of four years the coast returned as a government beginning to think about the web and
starting in 1999. In this village there officer. He was just one man, but he what “phantoms” might be lurking
is no Internet access, TV, phones or brought with him the entire structure of within it, transforming our society
electricity. The only books in the village the state, and this structure is primarily without our taking notice.
were Bibles from the local missions, but based in print. This did not fit well with
less than 10 percent of the population the local culture. For example, many Q. Your more recent work
could read. Almost all communication disputes were now settled in a court of analyzes the Internet,
was face-to-face. We tend to take for law, straight by the book. Instead of and Web 2.0 applications
granted the number of ways different attempting to heal relationships, the like YouTube and
media are involved in our day-to-day goal was to establish who was guilty by blogs in particular, as
lives, and it is only by witnessing life the letter of the law so they could serve communication mediums.
without these media that we begin to their sentence. The term “Web 2.0” is such
recognize their significance. The impact of print extended into a popular buzzword these
spatial arrangements as well. People days and is used in quite a
Q. Living in the United had been living in small semi-nomadic variety of contexts. How
States in this day and age hamlets, but these were virtually do you define Web 2.0?
makes it terribly difficult invisible to the state because they were A. Web 2.0 is like the word “post-
to imagine life without very difficult to map on the static pages modern.” It suggests that we don’t
the influence of media. of a book. The map and the census are actually know how to describe it, just
You have described a the eyes of the state. In order to make that it is somehow different than what
place where little, if any, the people visible, the government came before it. So in order to understand
technology exists—even officer demanded that people move into Web 2.0, we need to understand what
in the 21st century. What large stable villages with at least 200 came before.
kind of media influences people. This did not serve local life. It While a few creative minds and
did you find there, and served only the census-takers and the web pioneers found new and innovative
how do they affect that mapmakers of the state. uses for the World Wide Web from
culture? This was just the beginning of some the beginning, most mainstream users
A. As just one example, there was no dramatic changes I witnessed while tended to use it to fulfill the function
book of law to turn to during disputes. doing my field research, and many of of our previous technologies, especially
Instead, all of the people involved in the the changes I saw were partially due to print or TV. In 1997, the creator of the
dispute would meet for large face-to- the characteristics of the print medium web, Tim Berners-Lee, lamented that
face meetings. In most cases, they were itself. Locals operating with face-to-face it was little more than “a glorified
not trying to determine who was right communication did not need a written television channel.” We were all trying
or wrong, guilty or not guilty, but law to settle disputes, nor did they need to figure out what could be done with
instead they were trying to mend a a map or census to tell them who they this new technology and kept falling
broken relationship at the core of the were, but when their lives had to be back on the models from our old
dispute. In a small community it was translated into the static pages of a technology for inspiration. Many of

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us created the same things we could notifying that person that I have made a demographics than others?
create on paper, put them online, and comment about their entry. This seems What psychological or
called them web “pages.” We store our insignificant only until one recognizes social needs are being met
“documents” in “folders,” which are that there are now over 55 million with this technology—
even drawn to look like folders that sit blogs, many of them interlinking in this and driving this digital
on our virtual “desktops.” way, creating a richly interlinked global revolution?
Marshall McLuhan and Edmund conversation. A. On the one hand, we have a
Carpenter refer to this as the rearview Social bookmarking sites like strong desire to connect with others
mirror effect: We are racing down the Del.icio.us and Diigo put users in socially, but with this strong desire also
information superhighway looking control of organizing the massive comes a fear of rejection. Every time we
through the rearview mirror, seeing amounts of information now being socialize we are trying to balance and
everything we encounter as it translates produced in this global conversation. negotiate these competing emotions.
into our past Each medium of
models. In some ways Web 2.0 represents those developments communication
In some ways
Web 2.0 represents
that are truly web-native and not created by allows us to do this
in different ways,
those developments looking into the rearview mirror. negotiating how
that are truly we present
web-native and not created by looking Users themselves can “tag” blog ourselves and the context in which
into the rearview mirror. It is the entries, web sites, photos and videos. we present ourselves to increase our
web operating on its own unique terms Collectively, these tags organize the possibilities for the meaningful social
rather than simply imitating previous web from the bottom up with terms connections we desire, while mitigating
technologies. We knew from the designed by the users themselves. the risks of social rejection. Digital
beginning that the web was great at One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 technology creates almost limitless
interlinking information. We failed is that more people than ever can add possibilities for the creation of new
to explore the new ways that it could content to the web, help to organize it, types of social spaces, and our quest
interlink people. and have discussions about it. Some for a social space that maximizes
call Web 2.0 the “writeable” web, and connection while mitigating rejection
Q. So you’re saying that perhaps there is no better example of this drives us on.
one of the best ways to than a wiki like Wikipedia, which serves One way of framing this is through
understand Web 2.0 and its as a knowledge base that can be edited or the perspective developed by sociologist
impact on both the web and added to by the readers themselves. Erving Goffman almost 50 years ago.
the virtual community is to All of these technologies are He pointed out that people are less
look at the technology and becoming more and more integrated, involved in giving information than in
applications most commonly creating a highly integrated webscape giving shows. In particular, people are
associated with the term? that is increasingly user-generated and giving shows about who they are or who
A. Yes. The most obvious might be responds and shapes itself to the users’ they want you to think they are. One of
the blog. To the uninitiated, a blog needs. Some have likened the web as it is the draws of social networking sites like
seems like a simple personal diary open emerging today to a global consciousness Facebook and MySpace is that people
for the world to read, or amateur news that learns from us the more we use it. feel like they have more control over
reporting. But that is only how it would In one sense it is using us to learn and their presentation of self.
appear through the rearview mirror. grow. In another sense it is us. As an aside, I don’t think it was an
Blogs are web-native and have some accident that some of the biggest Web
important technology that makes them Q. What are the human 2.0 successes have been founded by
significantly different than anything elements contributing young 20-somethings who were less
that can be done on paper. Most to the current digital encumbered by old media models—
importantly, when I write a blog entry, phenomenon? That is, why Facebook and YouTube being the most
it is possible for me to link to somebody have Internet applications obvious examples of these innovations.
else’s entry on another blog and have like those used for social These sites allow you to carefully
my entry automatically appear in the networking made more construct how you present yourself
comments section of that other blog, dramatic inroads into some within this social space and without the

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pressure of spontaneity found in face-to- “rearview mirror,” does it? of anything that looks, sounds or smells
face interactions. Social networking sites They’ve been using these like advertising. They are starving for
reach into the younger demographic types of technology for so something real and authentic and only
more than the older not just because long they can’t remember, get hungrier as the advertising machine
the young are more adept with the or imagine, life without it keeps feeding them more and more fake
technology, but also because they are so thoroughly integrated authenticity, which they quickly see
more invested in showing people their into their lives. How does right through. Closely connected to
identities. Students build identity this manifest itself in a their demand for authenticity is a
through what they do, the movies and teaching and learning healthy questioning of authority: they
music they like, and who their friends environment? The work don’t entirely reject hierarchy, but they
are, among other things. All those place? The economy? do demand mutual respect.
things are on Facebook, fully Fortunately, it is easy to give them
interlinked, so not this respect once
only can students These students don’t have short attention spans; you realize that
express their they are secretly
identities through
they just need to be engaged and involved with the brilliant. Few
tagging themselves actual production of the learning itself. people give them
with these items, enough credit for
they can also immediately see who A. They don’t look at these the media gymnastics they are capable
shares a similar identity with them, and technologies the way that most of us do of performing. Many of them may not
even shape their identity based on how because they come to these technologies be fluent in the argument culture of
others are expressing theirs. as habitual users. This habitual use in writing, but they are magnificent critics
But these online social spaces do not turn shapes their ideas, ideals, attitudes (and sometimes creators) of audio and
exist all alone, nor are they replacing and values. visual media, and they can multi-task,
person-to-person social spaces. These They have grown up with the taking in and creating multiple forms of
multiple social spaces interact with each ability to click on any piece of media or media at once.
other in interesting ways. For example, information and view it on their own When I was growing up, I
part of going out to the social space of a terms. It is not surprising that they are remember arguing with teachers as to
concert is not just the enjoyment of the impatient with long linear lectures. whether or not we could use calculators
concert but to show others that you are They demand choice—lots of choices— on math exams. We argued that we
the type of person who likes this kind of and if as a teacher you do not have would always have calculators to help us
choices for them, you need to at least in the real world, so why not use them
music. So 10 years ago you would buy
create the illusion of choice. in the classroom? Now Google and
the t-shirt at the concert to carry that
In order to accommodate a plethora Wikipedia can fit an entire database
piece of your identity with you into
of choices, information needs to be spanning almost all of human
other social spaces to show others where
delivered in fairly small bits, with a knowledge into the same pocketsize
you had been. Now you tell people packages—those items we used to call
choice following from each small bit.
where you are on the social space of This can be seen in the quickly growing “cell phones.” How do we teach
Facebook, post a photo album after the “clip culture” of online videos. Most students living in a world where
show, and link to the band’s web site. clips are no longer than a television information is always readily at hand—
You post on other people’s Facebook commercial. The demands of clip culture literally and figuratively?
walls about how great the show was. extend beyond video to demands on At the most simple and practical
The wall is a public forum that anybody classroom lectures as well, leading many level, we need to teach them how to find
can see. So you are not just talking to professors to complain about short the right information. At a slightly
the individual who owns the wall. attention spans. These students don’t higher level, we need to teach them how
You are expressing yourself to anybody have short attention spans; they just need to interpret what they find. At a still
who might read the wall. to be engaged and involved with the higher level, we need to teach them how
actual production of the learning itself. to ask questions about what they find,
Q. The so-called They also may be the most what we often call “critical thinking.”
“Millennial Generation” marketed-to group in the history of the And at perhaps the highest level, we
doesn’t have much of a planet, and yet they are highly critical need to teach them “creative thinking,”

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which encompasses all of the lower
levels while also inviting them to create
their own works, knowledge and
information to add to the human story.
Q. Tell me more about this
quest for
authenticity.
What makes
To be authentic is to be transparent and sincere
something
authentic in
their eyes? What will
marketers and advertisers
have to do to effectively
reach this audience?
A. To be authentic is to be
transparent and sincere without ulterior
motives. We saw this recently while
studying the YouTube community of
vloggers. Vloggers create video diaries
to communicate with one another. A
few months ago one of these vloggers
asked the others why they vlog. The
most popular answers were not
surprising: they wanted to connect with
others, have fun and express themselves.
But not far down the list was this desire
for authenticity. Many commented that
they would rather watch real people
on YouTube than the commercial
productions on television. They saved
their harshest complaints for reality TV,
which they found to be the least real
because it is posing as something it
is not. Ultimately, it is the ulterior
motives that bother them. So not only
are they experts at seeing these ulterior
motives, they are also experts in making
sure they do not seem to have any
ulterior motives themselves. One of the
most interesting manifestations of this
expertise is the planned poverty of
production quality on YouTube. Many
YouTubers actually use cheap webcams
and editing software so they can appear
authentic and not be accused of being a
commercial production.
Advertisers have been trying to
address authenticity for a long time and
have had some success. Two slightly
dated examples come from soft drinks.
© The Lawlor Review
Coke became “the real thing,” and
Sprite bought celebrities to tell us not
to listen to celebrities and to “obey your
thirst.” These were effective in their
time, but both sound hollow and
deceptive to the youth coming of age
without ulterior motives.
today. The commercials were
overproduced, and the people featured
in the ads were a little too happy, rich or before expending the significant amount
beautiful to be authentic. The next
generation of “authentic” advertising
may be typified by Dove’s “Real Beauty” is not worth printing.
program. They are creating an online
platform for women to speak out against are taught how to form sound and solid
the beauty standards that Dove and its
parent company, Unilever, actually
helped to create. They have online
forums and have even invited
YouTubers to submit their own real
beauty ads to be featured on its web site.
By taking the authentic voices of real
people in the world and making them a
part of their campaign, they may delay
the backlash that comes when an
“authentic” campaign becomes exposed
for ulterior motives. That’s the danger
of an authenticity campaign. If people
begin to see through the authenticity
campaign, it can backfire and betray
any sense of trust that was originally
inspired by the campaign.
Q. One theme that keeps
appearing in discussions
about Web 2.0 is that of
collaboration. As you
have outlined, applications
like wikis and blogs
invite and enable digital
collaboration. As a
researcher looking at this
phenomenon at a macro
level, what implications do is not necessarily better than another.
these media have for human They are complementary. Ideas worked
communication?
[ 1 4 ]
A. Every medium has its own
possibilities, restrictions and challenges.
While no medium is completely
restricted to specific types of expression,
all media are biased towards certain types
of expression due to their structure,
format, and mode
of creation and
transmission. For
example, with
print-based media
such as books, there is a strong need to
put together a full and tight argument
of resources needed to make a print run.
It should be literally “noteworthy,” or it
In training for this environment, we
arguments that will stand the test
of time. This may be related to the
metaphor of argument as war, which has
been pointed out by linguist George
Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson.
We say that we must defend our position,
attack and shoot down the arguments of
others, and most importantly, we
conceive that we can either win or lose.
This model is well suited for scholarship
dominated by the slow peer review
structure of traditional print-based
scholarship.
The web speeds up the process of
rebuttal, reply and revision, and
demands a different approach. The
radically collaborative technologies
emerging on the web create the
possibility for doing scholarship in
the mode of conversation rather
than argument, or to transform the
argument-as-war metaphor into
something that suggests collaboration
rather than combat. Personally, I prefer
the metaphor of the dance—that we are
all dancing and playing with ideas, and
that we have to work together in order
to make the dance really work.
Any one mode of communication
out in the collaborative world of the
Spring 2007
51386_TLR_Spr.qxd 4/30/07 2:42 PM Page 15
web can be formed into printed books,
and those books can then be quickly
reviewed, critiqued and discussed in
the web.
Still, as more and more people
begin placing more
of their energies The web speeds up the process of rebuttal, reply
into doing
scholarship on the and revision, and demands a different approach.
web rather than The radically collaborative technologies emerging on the
producing print-
based publications, web create the possibility for doing scholarship in
we can expect some the mode of conversation rather than argument.
significant changes
not only in the way publications are
authored, but also in the authors
themselves. Taking myself as an
example, I find that I have an increasing
sense of myself as a collaborator in a
global conversation rather than a single
individual author. I am becoming
more comfortable with being “wrong”
because it is all part of the dance that
leads to deeper insights. I judge
contributions by how effectively they
move the dance, rather than how
“right” they might be. This ethos
that emphasizes collaboration over
authorship is not necessarily new, but
it is becoming more prominent and
mainstream.
Q. Is that why you
have created blogs for
your classes and even
the video “Web 2.0 ... The
Machine is Us/ing Us”?
A. Definitely. We all know that
learning a new language can transform
students by enriching their intellectual
capacities and giving them new
perspectives on the world. These new
technologies are like new languages,
and as students become fluent in them,
they are enriching their capacity for
learning and sharing what they learn
with others. I want my students to truly
experience these different technologies
not just so they know how to use them,
but also so they can learn new ways of
interacting and thinking.
© The Lawlor Review
Q. Today’s Internet
applications enable us to
communicate and “meet”
others in a way that’s not
been possible in the past.
We become part of a virtual strong relationship, especially when the
community, and although
we may never interact in
person, we consider many of So people find ways to hide themselves
these individuals to be our
friends, allies, colleagues.
How genuine or authentic
are these virtual
relationships?
A. Space is almost irrelevant
today when creating professional
relationships. I work from an office in
the basement of a house in St. George,
Kansas. I am currently collaborating on
two research projects, one with a native
of New York City currently living in
China who does research in India, and
another with a native of Nebraska
living in Helsinki who does research in
Papua New Guinea. These are valid and
genuine relationships, but they are
different from relationships featuring
frequent face-to-face contact.
My friends in Papua New Guinea
are experts in human relationships,
and they have some ideas about the
importance of face-to-face contact.
They are constantly studying human
relationships, discussing them, and
doing whatever they can to fix them if
they are strained or broken. One of their without the downsides, and many
core ideas is that if somebody can
actually see somebody else eye-to-eye,
they cannot help but feel empathy for
them and help them. In Pidgin English, of relying on electronic
they call this a “look-look” relationship. communication in situations
It is based on the idea of mutual
[ 1 5 ]
empathic vision. I see you and you see
me, and I will help you when I see that
you are in need, and you will help me
when you see that I am in need.
But even in Papua New Guinea,
where people value
these relationships
very strongly, there
is recognition that
this kind of strong
relationship has its
downsides. It can
be very challenging
to maintain such a
demands of one look-look relationship
compete with the demands of another.
to avoid the strong demands these
relationships can bring.
In some ways, online relationships
are appealing to people because they can
avoid the strong demands of look-look
relationships. For example, you can go
on YouTube and find a burgeoning
community of people who share some
of their most trusted secrets with total
strangers by uploading video diaries to
the web for virtually anybody to see.
When my students and I examined why
so many people were doing this, we
found that the number one answer was
because they wanted to connect socially
with other people and feel part of a
community, but they also liked that
they could disengage from those
relationships and that community at
any moment. There is less social risk
involved and significantly fewer
friendship responsibilities. This is not
to say that some people do not create
look-look relationships online, but
there is an easy way to create something
similar to look-look relationships
people take advantage of that.
Q. So many of us are guilty
that might have called for a
Spring 2007
51386_TLR_Spr.qxd 4/30/07 2:42 PM Page 16
personal conversation—or
at least a verbal one—in the
past. In college admissions, for
example, prospective students
learn about a campus
through a blog or by IMing a
current student rather than
visiting a campus. Is there a
downside to not having a
look-look relationship?
Are we as a society losing
something with less face-to-
face contact?
A. I think there is still an open
question about whether or not we have
actually lost face-to-face contact in the
past 13 years as the web has become
more prominent in our lives. Taking a
broader time frame, if we look at history
over the past 500 years, we could safely
say that we have lost a great deal of
face-to-face contact with the increase in
mass media from the printing press to
broadcast television. In some ways, the
web is actually recovering some of what
was lost in terms of face-to-face contact
over the past 500 years because it
simulates face-to-face contact better
than previous technologies.
It would be interesting to see a
scientific study examining the amount
of time students spend in office hours
with faculty now as compared to 15
years ago. I’m not sure that there would
be a significant difference. We often
assume that when we talk with students
in a chat room or by e-mail that we
have lost an opportunity for face-to-face
contact. It is just as likely that without
the chat room or e-mail we might not
have communicated at all.
The question is still a good one,
though: What do we lose if we are
moving further away from face-to-face
contact? The answer depends on the
technology that has replaced that
contact. Many technologies, like video
conferencing, can simulate face-to-face
contact very closely, while others like e-
mail are very different. Some media
theorists like Paul Levinson have
suggested that our communications
© The Lawlor Review
technologies are progressing towards a
more perfect simulation of face-to-face
contact. I disagree. I think each
medium is different, and humans
appreciate the ways they can use
those differences to their advantage.
Sometimes an e-mail really is preferable
to face-to-face contact. Face-to-face
contact is now just one mode of
communication in a quickly growing
array of possibilities, each with its own
set of advantages and disadvantages.
Q. In the last decade the
Internet clearly has
changed the global society,
economically, socially and
in ways we probably don’t
recognize yet. And now
there is so much hype about
Web 2.0. Is it just that—
hype, affecting only a very
small subset of the world?
Or is it truly a digital
revolution that will
forever change the course
of human history?
A. The hype of Web 2.0 is to say
that we are all connected more than ever
before, that the global village is finally
upon us. The reality is that there are
over five billion people not connected
via the Internet at all, and that three
billion of these people are living on less
than $2 per day.
The surprising thing about the
people who are not connected via the
Internet is that they often understand
the manner in which we are all
connected in much more profound ways
than we do, and this may stem from a
lifetime of less mediated face-to-face
communication. For example, my
friends in Papua New Guinea
place such a high value on human
relationships that they believe that their
health is dependent on strong relations
with others. When they get sick, they
carefully examine their relationships
with others and try to heal those in
order to heal their bodies.
[ 1 6 ]
In contrast, those of us connected
online tend to emphasize our
independence and individuality, failing
to realize the physical ways we are
interconnected with other people
throughout the rest of the world. We
pay little attention to the health of
those relationships, and one could say
that our global society is now sick, just
as my friends in Papua New Guinea
would predict given the state of those
relationships. The example that comes
to mind is a small boy I knew in a
Papua New Guinea village who wore
a torn and tattered University of
Nebraska sweatshirt, the only item
of clothing he owned. The grim
symbolism of that image for me is that
people in his village were producing
coffee that eventually found its way
onto shelves in my hometown in
Nebraska, and yet this boy may never
be able to afford to drink that coffee.
So if there is a global village, it is
not a very equitable one. The tragedy of
our times is that we are all physically
interconnected, but we fail to see it
and take care of our relationships with
others. For me, the ultimate promise
of the web is that it might enable us
to truly see one another once again
and all the ways in which we are
interconnected. The web is an enormous
accomplishment in this way. It has
never been more possible for us to truly
have a global view and understand the
world and how it works in such a
complete way. It might help us create a
truly global view that can spark the
kind of empathy we need to create a
better world for all of humankind. But
there is reason for concern, as well.
Diving too deeply into virtual realities
may lead to a certain numbness or
disregard for actual realities. If we don’t
understand our digital technology and
its effects, it can actually make humans
and human needs even more invisible
than ever before.
As Berners-Lee himself so eloquently
and succinctly stated, “It’s up to us.”
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A high profile college presidency
—indeed any college
presidency—is more challenging
than ever before, with public
expectations reminiscent of
corporate America. In this story,
we hear from presidents and
chancellors, board members, search
firm executives, and other campus
constituencies who share their
insights about what it takes not just
to be a college president today, but
what is necessary to thrive in the role
and to become a successful change
agent in higher education.
Leaving on a Jet Plane …
Many college presidents agree
with President Joanne Creighton
of Mount Holyoke College (South
Hadley, Massachusetts) that
fundamentally their role “to help
to advance the fortunes of the
institution in multiple ways” is the
same as it ever was. But, they are
quick to add that the day-to-day
nature of the job has been
transformed dramatically in recent
years, most prominently with an
expectation that their focus be well
beyond the campus gateposts.
“The major change,” says
James Doti, president of Chapman
University (Orange, California)
since 1991 and a faculty member
there since 1974, “has been the
expectation that presidents be
change agents, taking a much
more external role than internal;
becoming chief marketing officer
and the public face of the
university—not only for fund
raising, which has been true for
many years, but for articulating
clearly and convincingly the vision
of the university to the outside
community.”
In this capacity, President Doti
has taken on a somewhat unique role
© The Lawlor Review
LEADER ,
MAR KET ER ,
VISIONARY,
F UND R AISER
College Presidents in
Academia Today
by Kris Berggren
At the helm of every thriving
institution of higher education
stands its president or chancellor,
the campus superhero who grace-
fully fills a variety of roles—rain-
maker, cheerleader, politician,
public intellectual, custodian of
institutional finances, marketing
guru and, sometimes,
crisis manager.
Consider the recent search to
fill the top post at Harvard
University (Cambridge,
Massachusetts). One would expect
a host of contenders to clamor for
consideration. Instead, prior to the
February 2007 hiring of Drew
Gilpin Faust, voracious speculation
about the short list of candidates
barely matched the rate at which
many top prospects, including
leaders at such august institutions
as Tufts, Brown, Stanford,
Columbia, Princeton and
Cambridge, along with several
Harvard insiders, denied interest
in the position. Why?
[ 1 7 ]
for reaching friends of the
University: he takes his message to
the airwaves, with a “talking head
show” produced on campus and
aired on KLCE, a public television
station. Interviewing community
leaders and corporate executives on
his show, “Dialogue with Doti,” has
enabled him to get to know them
socially. This outreach has been
successful for the University. “Many
have joined our board of trustees
and become significant donors and
supporters of our university,”
reports Doti.
Earl Brooks II, the president
of Tri-State University (Angola,
Indiana) since 2001, has shared a
similar presidential experience as
Doti and Creighton. “For me a
drastic change is that a successful
college president has to be more
external,” says Brooks. And he
means that literally: Brooks spends
about 60 percent of his time away
from campus involved in activities
related to fund raising, alumni
relations and community relations.
The Fun in Fund Raising
The idea that a president’s
first order of business concerns
institutional finances probably
comes as little surprise. And, the
truth is that great presidents are also
great fund raisers. Data from the
American Council on Education
(ACE) 2006 survey of college
presidents indicates they spend
almost 38 percent of their time fund
raising. And, although 22 percent
said they felt insufficiently prepared
for fund raising in their first
presidency, 27 percent say it’s
their favorite aspect of the job.
“Fund raising is fun,” says
Daniel Ritchie, who, in addition to
serving as CEO of Westinghouse
Broadcasting for eight years, is
Spring 2007
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chancellor emeritus and chair emeritus
of the board of trustees for the
University of Denver (Colorado).
“You see the result of [fund raising],
and if you do this thing right, everyone
is very pleased.”
Ensuring donor satisfaction goes
hand-in-hand with fund raising,
adds Ritchie. (He once returned a
large gift because he could not use
it for the purpose to which it had
been given.) “When pleased, the
ones who have given you money
are most likely to do it again,” says
Ritchie. “I would say that close to
half of the gifts received come
from people unsolicited.”
So persuading people to give
lots of money to support the
work of a college or university
is nothing new for college
presidents. But nurturing donors,
and making “friends” and vital
partnerships for the institution, goes
well beyond the obvious alumni core
these days. And, doing this well takes
substantial time, creativity and finesse.
Raising the Bar
Raising money from alumni is one
thing; seeking it from other sources is
also a fundamental expectation of
today’s campus leaders. “The president’s
external responsibilities [include]
raising funds from the legislature,
from the federal government, paying
attention to student financial aid at
state and federal levels, and launching
and certainly spending more of their
time in comprehensive campaign after
comprehensive campaign,” said Ann
Die Hasselmo, who served as president
of Hendrix College (Conway, Arkansas)
for nine years and is now senior
consultant with Academic Search, Inc.
The pressures are intense, says David
Laird, president and chief executive
officer of the Minnesota Private College
Council. As he sees it, today’s boards
have raised the bar for campus leaders,
who annually are expected to solve an
© The Lawlor Review
“impossible equation.” “Basically, they
are supposed to balance the budget,
increase the quality of the institution
and incoming students, increase
diversity and reduce their discount rate.
And that,” says Laird, “is not a linear
equation.”
“Basically, they are supposed to
balance the budget, increase the
quality of the institution and
incoming students, increase
diversity and reduce their discount
rate. And that is not a linear
equation.”
—DAVID LAIRD
President and Chief Executive Officer
of the Minnesota Private College Council
As if that weren’t enough, a
watchdog mentality regarding
institutional finances demands that
presidents pay equal attention to both
the revenue stream and underlying
accounting and management practices.
Doti, an economist who studied
with Milton Friedman at the University
of Chicago (Illinois), serves on three
corporate boards of NYSE-listed
companies with Southern California
roots, so he is highly attuned to the
care with which an institution must
conduct fiduciary oversight. “I know
the pressures CEOs face,” he said.
“Sarbanes-Oxley, which grew out of
frustration about the Enrons in this
world, first hit public companies, but
increasingly the same kinds of board-
related policies are facing nonprofits.”
E. Gordon Gee has held more
university presidencies than any other
American. Prior to his appointment as
chancellor of Vanderbilt University
(Nashville, Tennessee) in 2000, he
was president of Brown University
(Providence, Rhode Island), The Ohio
State University (Columbus, Ohio), the
[ 1 8 ]
University of Colorado at Boulder, and
West Virginia University (Morgantown).
Having more than 20 years of experience
in this leadership role gives Gee a
unique perspective, and as he reflects on
the role, he echoes Doti’s sentiment,
saying, “The major challenge we face
is the regulatory atmosphere
we operate in, that of mistrust
brought about by the misdeeds of
corporate America.”
With an increased focus on
accountability, public image
and the bottom line, one might
expect boards to hire corporate
or nonprofit executives to bring
business savvy and marketing and
operational skills to the table.
But, in reality, most hires for the
top post are academic insiders.
Inside Job or Outside
the Box?
Although many institutions conduct
searches and indicate they would
welcome non-traditional candidates or
those whose leadership experience lies
outside higher education, that’s rarely
what happens, said Hasselmo, who
facilitates senior-level searches with
Academic Search, Inc. “The vast
majority are filled by people who have
lived long in the academy,” she says.
In fact, the rate of presidents
coming from a primarily non-academic
background has slowed a bit after a
15 percent peak in 2001, according to
data from the ACE survey of college
presidents, notes Judith Block
McLaughlin, director of the Higher
Education Program at Harvard
University and an expert on college
presidential leadership, assessment and
transitions. The survey also reveals that
13 percent of presidents in 2006 held
their prior positions outside of
academia, compared with about
10 percent in 1986.
Both experts say successful
presidents may come from either
inside or outside the institution.
Spring 2007
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Yet sometimes presidencies are
contentious—and brief—when the
individual and the institution prove
a mismatch.
“Cultures, context, protocols,
expectations, values, mission and
norms are different from place to
place,” says Block McLaughlin.
“That is not just true for people
who come from outside higher
ed, but also for those who come
from one academic institution to
another. But there is typically a
bigger disjuncture or discrepancy
between what may have made
someone successful in a non-
academic workplace, and [the needs of]
an academic workplace.”
“Only by understanding the
institution and its culture can the
president assist the institution in
finding itself in a new way [that]
resonates with how faculty, staff and
other constituencies understand the
place they love,” adds Hasselmo.
An example of a strong outside-the-
box hire is Sanford Ungar, president
of Goucher College (Baltimore,
Maryland). Though Ungar had served as
dean of the School of Communications
at American University (Washington,
D.C.), he did not have “the traditional
academic credentials of a Ph.D. and
teaching experience,” said Goucher
board chair John Bond, chair and
former CEO of The Columbia Bank,
“but what he did bring were
outstanding equivalent credentials,
as an author, as well as extensive
international exposure from his
journalistic career [including several
years hosting National Public Radio’s
‘All Things Considered’] and as head of
Voice of America.”
Ungar wasn’t hired for his Rolodex,
Bond says, but his personal and
professional connections have
heightened Goucher’s visibility. After
all, only someone like Ungar could
bring Maurice Sendak, Bob Woodward
© The Lawlor Review
and Miss Manners (Judith Martin),
among others, to speak on campus with
little more than a personal phone call.
“The major challenge we face
is the regulatory atmosphere
we operate in, that of mistrust
brought about by the misdeeds
of corporate America.”
—JAMES DOTI
President of Chapman University
(Orange, California)
The Art of Communication
Ungar might have the advantage
when it comes to celebrity contacts,
but for any college president to
succeed, he or she must excel in the
art of communication. Of course, the
dynamics of campus leadership in
the 21st century call for skills to
communicate by any and all means
necessary: by telephone, online,
face-to-face, on television or in front
of thousands.
“An effective president needs to be
visible,” says higher education veteran
Owen Sammelson, recently retired
vice president for administration at
Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter,
Minnesota). This is especially true at
a small college, and especially among
students, suggests Sammelson. “Even
seeing a president for two to three
minutes shows he or she is interested in
what others are doing,” he says. “That is
important in terms of morale.”
Gordon Gee hardly runs a small
college, but he prioritizes personal
contact with folks on campus. “I think
one cannot under-communicate,”
says Gee. “I spend a considerable
amount of time walking [around the]
campus and visiting people in their
offices, [getting to know] the names of
families and friends and finding out
what they are about.”
[ 1 9 ]
“If a president doesn’t view
himself as having that kind of personal
leadership role, then I would suggest
he is not providing the leadership
necessary in a very people-centered
institution,” concludes Gee.
And, as Gee can attest, good
communication begets good
communication. Despite the
University’s accomplishments
under his watch—including
completing a $1.25 billion fund-
raising campaign two years ahead
of schedule; doubling research
funding; tripling student financial
aid; and increasing applications,
minority enrollment and average SAT
scores—Gee was subjected to intense
criticism last year in the local media for
his compensation package and spending
decisions. However, in the end, the
media’s attempt to censure him merely
illuminated the tremendous support
Gee has earned from faculty, students
and his board of trustees. They reacted
as if he were a rock star in a bow tie
rather than a campus administrator, and
their enthusiasm for Gee snuffed out
the story.
But, not every college president
has a larger-than-life presence, and a
growing number may wear mid-heel
pumps rather than a tie. Regardless,
the best leaders communicate regularly
and effectively, often with good old-
fashioned face time. Building trust one
personal conversation at a time can
facilitate the president’s ability to share
his or her vision for the institution. And
that, say observers, is an essential task
for a successful leader.
Sharing the Vision
“Schools that struggle tend to be
those that don’t have presidents who are
clear and articulate about their vision,”
said Kevin Crockett, who estimates
he’s worked with about 150 college
presidents as the president and CEO of
enrollment management consulting
Spring 2007
51386_TLR_Spr.qxd 4/30/07 2:42 PM Page 20

firm Noel-Levitz. “Some say it’s
possible to talk too much about vision,
but I don’t think so. Good presidents
talk about vision all the time so that
every campus constituency—from a
person who works in the cafeteria
to a distinguished faculty chair—
knows the vision and can speak to
it as well.”
For 20 years, President Robert
Bottoms of DePauw University
(Greencastle, Indiana) has demonstrated
unwavering commitment to articulating
his vision to skeptics and fans alike.
“[Bottoms’] cardinal quality as a
leader of the University is in creating a
university vision,” states DePauw
English professor Martha Rainbolt.
“He has such a strong sense of what
DePauw might be.” That vision has
led DePauw to very successful fund-
raising efforts allowing the University
to make significant academic
improvements and land in the top tier
rankings, which, notes Bottoms, are
actually quite important in attracting
international students—a component
of his longtime vision to diversify the
heartland campus.
“Ever since I came here in 1979,”
Rainbolt said, “he has always been
committed to diversity, and that was
not always popular with the trustees
and donors. In ’79 this place felt like
the ’50s. He really changed it.”
Rainbolt coordinates the new Janet
Prindle Ethics Institute, which also
grew out of Bottoms’ vision to
promote the moral formation of
students by incorporating ethics
throughout the curriculum.
Campus leaders and faculty from
very different kinds of institutions
agree that not only having a vision but
also eliciting buy-in from all sides are
essential for a president’s success.
Collaborating for
Consensus
Mount Holyoke College has
managed to buck current trends in
higher education, maintaining its niche
as a liberal arts women’s college thanks
to President Creighton’s vision “to
look at its historic mission and make
sure it is relevant in a postmodern,
postfeminist world,” said former board
chair Barbara Rossotti, who is a senior
partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw
Pittman, LLP. Rossotti describes
Creighton as a listener and a planner,
and “utterly collaborative,” which
allows her to make difficult decisions
with the support of the community.
For example, despite initial protest,
including student sit-ins, the College
recently ended its long-cherished policy
of completely need-blind admission,
ultimately with the unanimous support
of the faculty and the board.

U s i n g t h e P r e s i d e n t ’ s P l at f o r m f o r P u b l i c G o o d
by Kris Berggren

presidencies are those who have offended the fewest

A sensitive aspect of the college president’s job is the
role of public intellectual or advocate. Yet in today’s
court of public opinion, to speak out definitively on a
divisive topic may be risky.
“In a period of political unrest and highly charged
discussions about both public policy and the role of higher
education in the community,” says David Laird, the
president of the Minnesota Private College Council,
“presidents are always caught in a conflict between their
need to maintain the support of their principal donors and
to provide public leadership as educators in the middle of
that conflict. And it is not surprising to listen to presidents
who are frustrated by the limits of their own freedom.” Yet
some presidents would resist such reticence.
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee)
Chancellor Gordon Gee says, “I think in many ways
university presidents have lost their voice for two reasons.
First: One becomes fearful of offending individuals.
Second: Increasingly, people appointed to university
number of people for the longest period of time. So you
don’t get people who are given to speaking out about the
issues of the day. We do not have the kind of intellectually
based leadership we should have. We don’t get it from
corporate structures in this country, either.”
Daniel Ritchie, chancellor emeritus and chair emeritus
of the board of trustees at the University of Denver
(Colorado), agrees that presidents have abdicated the
expectation that they’ll take a stand on important issues,
but he’s more sympathetic.
“I think most presidents are so busy just staying above
water,” says Ritchie, “that they don’t have time to go out
and do really extraordinary things publicly. I think we
should, but there are so many risks in what you do every
day that to add to them by taking controversial positions is
difficult.”
Ritchie recently helped lobby for a city sales tax to fund
universal preschool in Denver. The University of Denver

© The Lawlor Review [ 2 0 ] Spring 2007

51386_TLR_Spr.qxd 4/30/07 2:42 PM Page 21

“She was successful with that issue
because she attacked it analytically
rather than emotionally,” Rossotti
said, and because Creighton solicited
cross-constituent input on the issue and
communicated throughout the process
with the entire college community.
A first-year follow-up report showing
that the shift improved both class
quality and institutional finances was
shared campus-wide, too.
Other institutions with different
problems call for different tactics—but
the same process of creating consensus.
For example, Tri-State’s Brooks gets rave
reviews from his staff and board for
transforming a “stagnant” institution
with a deeply troubled financial history
into a thriving campus whose alumni
barely recognize the campus for its
extreme makeover, according to Board
of Trustees President John Pittman, who
is retired but makes eight to 10 trips a
year to the Indiana campus from his
Texas home. Inquiries have doubled,
enrollment has grown from 1,250 to
2,000, and the discount rate has dropped
13 percent.
Tri-State’s Vice President for
Enrollment Management Scott Goplin
says he’s worked for “poor, mediocre,
good and great” presidents during his
28-year career in higher education, and
he ranks Brooks among the very best.
Brooks has the makings of a great
institutional leader, according to
Goplin. “He earns the respect of the
broad institutional community.
He keeps the alumni, faculty and
institution focused on solving
institutional problems, not on the
president. He keeps the focus true and
not on himself.”
“Basically, he’s built an environment
where people can grow and take a little
risk,” says Pittman, “one where
everyone in the administration and
faculty knows—or is getting on the
train—that we are advancing every
aspect of university life. And everyone
is encouraged.” And Tri-State hasn’t
had a “loss” year since Brooks’ arrival,
Pittman said.
Calculating the Risks
Given the high stakes involved, it
might be surprising to learn that the
leading college presidents are more
entrepreneurial today than they were in
the past. “They look beyond traditional
thinking to move their campuses
forward,” said Kevin Crockett of
Noel-Levitz.
DePauw board member Tim Solso
describes President Bottoms’ leadership
in terms of ethical and management
risks that have paid off for the
University. Several years ago, Bottoms
decided to issue bonds to capitalize on

operates an early childhood school for children from six
weeks to four years of age. While funding preschool
may seem like a no-brainer, Ritchie says it is indeed
controversial among those who believe educating young
children is a parental responsibility, not a public one. The
tax, which was the first of its kind in the country, he notes,
passed by a narrow margin.
“In my situation,” Ritchie says, “I had sufficient
confidence after a while that I was going to be okay on the
home front, so I spoke out about early childhood education
and have become known as a person who knows what he
is talking about and is willing both from a university
perspective and otherwise to support that.”
Mount Holyoke (South Hadley, Massachusetts)
President Joanne Creighton believes that using her
platform to promote some issues is good for the
institution’s public profile, but she has limits. “I do think
there are some areas where one shouldn’t go. I should
stay away from some vexed public policy issues, or from
endorsing a political candidate. But, for example, we were
a leader in going SAT optional. I have been out there on
that issue. We are very keen on our diversity agenda. I
would be out there on that issue.”
Other presidents, such as former journalist Sanford
Ungar of Goucher College (Baltimore, Maryland), believe
the liberal arts college is precisely where touchy subjects
ought to be debated.
“I think a liberal arts college has to be a center of
discussion on the important issues of the day,” says Ungar.
He and his colleagues “have an obligation” to use their
platform to advance the public discourse. “I don’t think
you can put a wall around a liberal arts college and say the
only thing we talk about is whether students should be
allowed to live off campus or whether this course gets
credit for this major. We should discuss the issues of the
day. If we don’t, who will?”
Laird says that the current wartime political climate
recalls an earlier era. “When I am talking with presidents
about that conflict [of interest] I always try to point them
back to the roles of Robben Fleming and Fr. Hesburgh
and Derek Bok [former presidents of the University of
Michigan, the University of Notre Dame and Harvard
University, respectively] during the Vietnam War era;
those people rose above everything and put their own
personal positions on the line to be both promoters of
public discussion and healers.”

© The Lawlor Review [ 2 1 ] Spring 2007

51386_TLR_Spr.qxd 4/30/07 2:42 PM Page 22
the University’s credit capability in
order to improve facilities and hire
more faculty. “The University is
flourishing today because of that,” said
Solso. “And it would not have happened
if Bob and a few board members
hadn’t had the courage to borrow
money and make those
investments.”
Bottoms has also been a
“pioneer and a champion of
diversity in terms of recruiting
both diverse students and faculty,
although that did take, and still
does, an extraordinary effort,”
Solso said. Together Bottoms and
Solso have created an international
scholarship program eventually
expected to fund hundreds of
international students at DePauw
as four-year matriculants, while
DePauw students will spend time
in developing countries.
“That hits my hot spot,” admits Solso,
the chairman and CEO of Cummins,
a multibillion-dollar multinational
company, who says too many young
graduates come into business lacking
even basic global awareness.
“How many university presidents
that have been at it for 20 years
continue to have new ideas and
greater enthusiasm than ever before?”
Solso posed. “He is still growing and
developing as a college president and
a human being.”
Working Together,
Despite Differences
Presidents say, of course, that
communicating with all their
constituencies is important, but perhaps
none are linked more closely to effective
leadership than the faculty and the
board of trustees. Yet, according to
a recent survey of 2,148 college
presidents by the American Council on
Education, many presidents consider
faculty and board relationships among
their biggest challenges.
© The Lawlor Review
Faculty relationships are considered
among the top three most challenging
constituencies by 41.5 percent of
presidents of private institutions
and 37.4 percent of those at public
According to a recent survey of
2,148 college presidents by the
American Council on Education,
many presidents consider faculty
and board relationships among
their biggest challenges.
institutions. Faculty may indeed
be “the core of your institution,” as
one president put it, but they’re
famously process-oriented, which
can be maddening to your basic
bottom-line type.
DePauw trustee Solso believes
managing the relationship with faculty
is one of the three most important roles
of a college president, with the others
being fund raising and acting as chief
operating officer.
“[To be a] college president is a fine
balancing act,” Solso says. “By that I
mean first, you have to manage your
relationship with the faculty, and that
is pure consensus management. And
faculty tend to have a very diverse
perspective, not necessarily always
tied to the real world. That is not a
judgment against them. But to be an
effective college president you have to
have an effective relationship with
faculty.” Indeed, DePauw faculty value
President Bottoms’ direct, honest and
respectful communication—even when
viewpoints diverge.
“[Dr. Bottoms] says the same thing
to everybody; he doesn’t change his
message depending on what group
he is talking to,” DePauw’s Professor
Rainbolt says. “Of course, some people
don’t like Bob Bottoms, and all of us
have disagreed with him at various
[ 2 2 ]
times, including me. But one thing that
gives him staying power is that you
can disagree with him—and he expects
you to. Sometimes he goes ahead and
does what he wants to anyway. But
he respects people who disagree
with him.”
Twenty-two percent of
presidents of public and private
institutions alike also rank their
boards of trustees or governors
among the top three most
challenging constituencies.
Having been on both sides of the
table—as the former chancellor
and former chair of the board of
trustees at the University of Denver—
Daniel Ritchie claims a secret to success
is the ability to build consensus on
campus through listening as well as
sharing one’s own ideas.
“Taking the time in the beginning
to hear others, you learn things and
change your ideas, and to some degree
change theirs,” Ritchie says. “But once
you have a generally agreed upon course
and mission, it gets easier because
you can always go back to that [as a
touchstone].”
Bottoms says he relies on DePauw
board members to support him in
areas where he is not an expert, like
the sciences and business operations.
“When you have a $100 million
budget, you are running a business,”
explains Bottoms. “We have a very
strong board of trustees. They do not
interfere with internal matters like
staffing and, conversely, I have learned a
lot from trustees about the business side
of a college. If I have an entrepreneurial
spirit, I have the ability to harness the
wisdom of many people.”
Sometimes presidents learn the
importance of shared ownership and
teamwork in decision-making the hard
way. When he first attempted to move
Chapman University from NCAA
Division II to Division III athletics in
an attempt to shift athletic scholarship
Spring 2007
51386_TLR_Spr.qxd 4/30/07 2:42 PM Page 23

money to academic scholarships, President

Doti admits, “I failed miserably.”
However, success was attainable
HARDWICK~DAY & THE LAWLOR GROUP, INC.
when he chose a different approach: PRESENT
“[After my first attempt,] I talked
with my cabinet and an elder
statesmen in the community,” says
Doti. “He gave me a strategic
approach I might use, and later
Chapman did implement the change.”

“C” is for Charisma

Leading colleges and universities
today requires myriad different skills,
and each president approaches the job
with a unique set of experiences, talents
and goals. Despite their differences, the TRANSFORMATION
best college presidents share a certain
quality that is hard to define. It’s a AND CHANGE
blend of optimism, determination,
confidence and charm. It’s what keeps
Reflecting on the Past,
them going and enables them to Preparing for the Future
manage the overscheduled calendars,
days and days of travel, and thousands
of names and faces—all with a smile. JUNE 14-15, 2007
What is it that keeps good
presidents going? Perhaps Gordon Gee MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
says it best: “I love what I do.”
“I am more energized today than CONFIRMED PRESENTERS INCLUDE
when I started. I remember a good
Andre Bell
friend and mentor who told me, ‘The Vice President, Midwest Regional Office, The College Board
mistake university presidents make is
Jennifer Delahunty Britz
they love the university too much,’ Dean of Admission at Kenyon College and honored as a “New Voice” in
and that they really should keep [the higher education by The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2005
university] at arm’s length,” relates Gee.
Timothy Malefyt
“I think that is not right.” Anthropologist and Director of Cultural Discoveries, BBDO Worldwide
“[Presidents] have to be engaged
Jon McGee
in the life of the institution. When it Author of “Who Can Afford Private Colleges? Who Can Private Colleges Afford?”
does well, relish it; when not, take the (Lawlor Perspective)
blame and the appropriate steps to
Lloyd Thacker
make changes,” says Gee. “There are Author of College Unranked and founder of The Education Conservancy
300,000,000 people in this country and
3,600 colleges, so that makes college George Kuh
Director, National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
presidents a very rare breed indeed.
I have always viewed the university Plus
Presidential Panel Discussion
presidency as a calling and a blessing.
I never call it a job. I refuse to use
that word ‘j-o-b.’ I have a unique REGISTER TODAY AT WWW.THESUMMERSEMINAR.COM
opportunity and do not want to ENROLLMENT IS LIMITED
waste a single moment.”

© The Lawlor Review [ 2 3 ] Spring 2007

51386_TLR_Spr.qxd 4/30/07 2:42 PM Page 24

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