Strategies for University Management, Volume II

CHAPTER 2

Developing and Maintaining Meaningful Relationships with Faculty, Staff, and Students

Arthur F. Kirk, Jr.

My two presidencies can be classified as “turnarounds.” I started my presidency of Keuka College in January 1984 nine months after the area press reported that college might not reopen for the 1983–1984 academic year after over a decade of declining enrollment and mounting financial deficits. The reports were not exaggerated, the school’s board of trustees had formed a secret committee to plan the orderly closing of the college months before the press stories. Only the bequest of a late trustee received a few weeks after the press reports provided the cash for the college to limp through the summer and reopen for one last ditch ...