Endless Knots

"The College That Would Not Go Gently"

Today's New York Times Education section carries yet another article about the Antioch College saga, which I've posted about aplenty. The story is not over and each writer who tries to tell it struggles for another angle that makes it make sense. Squaring the circle, that.

The lead picture with today's Times article says as much as anything in the piece itself: It's raining, pouring apparently, and one lone person is struggling into a desolate student union. In my five years at the college, there was never a moment when a picture like that could have been taken: the Union, as we called it, was teeming with activity day and night. Indeed, it was usually hard to find a table in the cafeteria. A college built for 2000 now has barely 200.

Graduation is next week and it might be Antioch College's last - and it might not be. The Antioch University Board of Trustees and the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC) are still talking, even after reports that talks have broken off. And there's yet another organization called "Non-stop Antioch" that vows to soldier on with a million dollars in funds collected by still another group of alums.

If the ACCC is successful in gaining control over the college (two deals have been proposed, one whereby this non-profit founded by a group of wealthy alums takes over the college assets in exchange for $10 million, another whereby ten of these alums join the University Board and ten of the current trustees resign), their challenges will be immense. Not insurmountable but immense. They too will have to make tough decisions about reconstruction, tenure, recruitment, endowment...all the things that plague the institution now. And, ironically, among their numbers are some of the very same people who served on the Board of Trustees while the college declined and the endowment did not grow.

It's not over and I do admire everyone who's hung in there constructively on all sides.

Bad in math? Take art!

Lucky me. I had the chance to spend some time the other night with my old friend and networker extraordinaire, Lisa Kimball. Lisa’s been working of late with Plexus Institute, purveyors of the concept of “positive deviance.” In a nutshell, this approach to organizational change focuses on what goes right rather than its dreaded evil cousin. Plus, instead of introducing massive initiatives from the top, these folks find those pools of ingenuity in the organization, coaching staff to coach others in very simple interventions that solve seemingly intractable problems. In other words, do-it-yourself because...those who do know best.

Here’s a video that makes the point: Jasper Palmer, for whom “The Palmer Method” has been named, came up with a simple fix for a mounting problem. As staff at Albert Einstein Hospital in Philadelphia began using isolation gowns and gloves in all situations where needed, their trash problem grew exponentially. Some numbers help demonstrate the magnitude of trash growth: from 6000 gowns to 120,000. That’s a lot of paper and latex to get rid of. Mr. Palmer figured out the fix. Take a look.

Now what has this to do with the title of this post? The principles of positive deviance remind me of some beliefs about education that we witnessed working with a child who was doing poorly in math while excelling in art. The parents of said child were advised to tutor her in math. They chose a different approach: they amped up her art education and guess what? The following year, she got As in physics.

Circling back to positive deviance: find what’s working well in your organization and spread the news laterally. Identify areas where processes are good and invest in making them exemplary. The laggardly areas are sure to follow.

It's closed, it's open, it's closed, it's not...

Oh, Antioch. I've been following the saga since last June when the Antioch University Board of Trustees decided to temporarily shutter the college in hopes of saving it. In June, the board took its decisive vote; seconds later, the alums rose up in protest; in November, the trustees voted to reconsider their decision after a few alums banded together and formed a new 501(c)3 in hopes of taking over the college; and just last week, the board voted again to keep the college closed. Disclosure: I've got friends on both sides of this struggle -- trustees, of which I was briefly one, whose judgment I honor and respect, and officers of the new non-profit, Antioch College Continuation Corporation, one of whom has been a close friend since we were at Antioch together and whose business acumen is unparalleled (in my experience).

I don't know how to solve this one but I do know that this predicament calls for the greatest shoring up of maturity imaginable, including giving one another the greatest benefit of the doubt. I've heard a lot of conversation that is not that, frankly, and have been on the sore end of some of it myself just for saying that the board was brave to make its first move. I repeat what I said then: the college was not viable when I went onto the university board (1998) and things have only gotten worse. The trustees took a controversial decision that finally woke up the alums. Now, everyone, please talk civilly and productively. Not talking is not going to solve this. End of sermon.

Antioch College, Chapter 9763

For those following the Antioch College story, this update. Frankly, one could devote a whole website to it. Indeed, several have. A Boston area Antioch Alumni Association (alumni site here) meeting last Sunday prompts this post.

Brief recap: In June '07, the Antioch University Board of Trustees, of which Antioch College is the home of the brand and the original progenitor of its far-flung tentacles (there were once nearly 40 mini-Antiochs around the country), voted to suspend operations at the college for lack of funds. Enrollment had plummeted in the past few years (down from 2000 when I graduated in 1970 to less than a tenth of that this year). I've done a bunch of posts about this (The little college that might, among others), about the finger-pointing, about the outcry from the college alumni who revere their memories of their time there (as do I), about the immature reaction of some who chose to scapegoat others, some of those scapegoaters also having served in positions where they were responsible for creating the conditions that led to the college shutting down.

Comes then the outcry and the pledge by alums to fill the coffers. Good news, lots of energy to save the place, alums meeting everywhere to figure out how to turn demise into delight. Thrilling to see what my fellow alums were capable of - and how great the affection for this national educational treasure. Antioch's storied history is recorded in many places but in short it was the first college in the US to offer work/study, a unique form of experiential education that taught us how to work and learn at the same time. I've written elsewhere here about my co-op jobs. Horace Mann, the great educator who lived here in Newton, Mass., was the first president of Antioch College (1852); Arthur Morgan, Antioch's president for decades, instituted the co-op program. Then Antioch pioneered a massive junior-year-abroad program (Antioch Education Abroad) and I benefited from that too as the first woman from the college to go to Oxford as an undergrad.

Enough about how great it was.

Following their surprise announcement to suspend college operations, the university trustees seemed to hear what the alums were saying and, working with the Alumni Board, agreed in November to reverse the suspension. Then the unexpected yet again. The Alumni Board rejected the Board's suspension because the big-dollar donors were unwilling to fork over their funds (some had only made pledges) unless the college had complete autonomy from the University. Complete autonomy, meaning its own Board of Directors bearing no formal ties to the University. And at about the same time, a new nonprofit formed, Antioch College Continuation Corporation (link will take you to its most recent communication).

What struck me again at Sunday's alumni meeting was the fervor with which nearly everyone spoke, their love for the college and their desire to revive it. Most had a "hot button" issue, whether the way the original decision was communicated or the location of a new building for one of the Antioch graduate campuses located in the same town as the college, or why the other adult campuses (there are five around the country) couldn't just make up the college's deficit (they don't have the funds). But all agreed that Antioch College is a national treasure and that it must be preserved.

Me too. Among the most eloquent was Everett Mendelsohn, another of our esteemed alums and professor of the History of Science at Harvard, who has recommended that we convene the very the best minds in education - and among the alums - to plot the college's future. Funds are critical, yes, but a vision for an Antioch for the 21st-century is fundamental to attracting the brightest students and retaining the best faculty.

Simulating work in the B-schools

Thoughtful piece by Francesca Di Meglio in Business Week on business schools using online simulations with students: "Virtual Workplaces in the Classroom." With students who've grown up gaming - and clever technology available, the B-schools are introducing simulations for hands-on learning. (Click for "Business Education, Enhanced with Technology," a slide show showing how simulations, complete with photos of students using them - kudos to folks who put this together).

Mindful that this could lead to isolation with students sitting at their computers instead of getting together to discuss the classic B-school icon, the case study, the schools are addressing that too:

Simulations aren't capable of replacing case studies just yet, though. Critics point out that having students work on a computer isolates them and does not provide enough interaction with other people, something a manager has to be able to do successfully. Case studies are also easier and cheaper to develop...

So developers are starting to create case studies and simulations to be used in combination. Harvard Business School Publishing, known for its case studies, recently launched its first online simulation on pricing, and this spring is planning to unveil an online simulation on service and operation management designed to go hand in hand with one of its best-selling case studies.

Both and. Together and apart. Virtual and face-to-face. Always makes me happy when organizations pay attention to the two. Our old saw on this:

Isolate to concentrate, congregate to collaborate.

The wisdom of bloggers

Earlier this week, I taught "Blogging for Creative Writers" in the Pine Manor MFA program just outside Boston.

The session took place in the President's Dining Room of the student center, the very nice big room where I made the decision to start blogging.**

The class was an hour long. People introduced themselves, said why they'd come. Some blog now, some were being asked to blog, some were just curious. I didn’t jot down the job titles but I remember a webmaster for a nonprofit, a teacher, a healthcare publication editor, a social worker I’ve met before, a woman who wants to blog in Senegal, and one who’s waiting for a liver transplant. Two-thirds of the students in the MFA program came to the elective class, along with some faculty (I saw poet Dzvinia Orlowsky and biographer/historian/Guggenheim-awardee Randall Kenan) -- some measure of interest in blogging at the MFA level.

Here's the 20-slide presentation <Download Blogging.pdf>, "Blogging for Creative Writers". Included are detailed results of the "Advice from other bloggers" survey that I ran here. Many thanks to the 35 who posted comments. Your names and websites are on a page of your own in the presentation.

And here’s a summary of your responses:

1. Has blogging improved your writing?
Most said yes, some said no on grounds that writing for blogs is different from their real writing. Two asked readers to judge for themselves.

2. How long, on average, does a good post take?
From five minutes to several days, with most saying between 30 minutes and an hour. At the very quick end are the little bits of info people drop on their blogs, usually with links to something else. A couple of responders are professional bloggers; one is a genealogist who has dozens of posts in preparation, pending extensive research. One said: “From beginning to end.”

3. One unusual thing that’s come from blogging
Many have reconnected with old friends; several have gotten work; one has had work that began as posts published...and a number have become addicted (not me, of course).

4. Advice to new bloggers
Many said keep it short; many said link to others; and a few said be warned: It will take over your life.

**In 2005, I was a student in the first Solstice Summer Writers Workshop. Dennis Lehane, Roland Merullo, Manette Ansay, Terrance Hays, and a few others were discussing the boundary between fiction and non-fiction.

The only one in the room with a laptop, I felt pretty conspicuous and took notes anyway. Within a day or so, I posted my very first blog entries. For the record, that week at Solstice shot adrenaline into my writing; I had a usable draft of a novel by the following Spring.

Advice from other bloggers

Week after this one, I teach an elective on blogging in the Pine Manor MFA program. Thus this poll:

1. Has blogging improved your writing?
2. How long, on average, does a good post take?
3. One unusual thing that's come from your blogging
4. Your advice to new bloggers

All responses attributed to authors unless otherwise requested.

The little college that might

For those following the saga of Antioch College, it just gets better and better. Briefly, last June, the Antioch University Board of Trustees suspended operations at the college due to low enrollment and an endowment so paltry that subsidizing the deficit was not a viable option. The alumni went nuts. Appalled that their beloved institution (mine too) could be shuttered, they rallied, some more maturely than others.

Over the past six months, negotiations between the Alumni Board (elected by the College alums) and the Board of Trustees, augmented by a nationwide fund-raising drive among alums (not exactly known for emptying their pockets on behalf of the college in the past) led to two unexpected developments:

1. On November 3, the University Board agreed to lift the suspension with a number of provisos; and

2. Yesterday, December 11, the Board "approved a resolution instructing [the university chancellor] to begin exploring the possibility of transferring the ownership of Antioch College to a separate, free-standing liberal arts institution with its own board of trustees..." by July 1, 2008.

In the interim, a third group, the newly formed Antioch College Continuation Corporation, a 501(c)3 incorporated in Ohio, will serve as the new entity to operate the college, independent of the university. The incorporators of the new group are mostly college alums (one is not); a number are former university board members.

Hats off to this new group, to the alums working so hard to preserve this national treasure, and to the university board for moving with the tide.

NOTE TO ANTIOCHIANS: check out the virtual conversation among alums about all this along with the Antioch College Record Online. Ahhhh, for the days when I was a managing editor and stayed up all night at Yellow Springs News putting filler into lines of lead type.

When is the future over?

We had dinner last night with a potential client who's thinking about a problem we hear often: how to educate executives (both current and future) in "virtual team" or "global" or "distributed" (depends on the corporate culture) leadership.

Organizations approach this problem differently depending on their most pressing presenting symptom: if they're a US company opening operations in, say, India, for the first time, they might think they need cross-cultural training; if they're HR folks, they might focus on how to do performance reviews without coming together in person; if they're concerned about knowledge retention, their focus might be on IT. Each valid, each stemming from the same basic condition: people can no longer pop down the hall to discuss things.

But last night, this astute executive asked a question approximately like this one: How do you know when you're done learning how to work virtually?

The answer, we think, is never. As soon as we become adept at teleconferences (which remains a major sticking point for most organizations we run into), we're going to need to learn how to conduct a good meeting via hologram. And by the time we're really good at holo-meetings, we're likely to need help in making decisions about whom to teleport to the next annual conference. Admittedly, I'm off in the Twilight Zone but you get the point.

The art of collaboration is evolutionary and our collective job is to learn how to do it better right now.

ANTIOCH COLLEGE’S SUSPENSION LIFTED!

Just received this email from the Boston Antioch College (my alma mater) Alumni Group:

At 2 p.m. EST, the Antioch University Board of Trustees, in historic collaboration with the Alumni Board, agreed today to lift the suspension of operations at Antioch College originally slated for June 30, 2008. This decision, which follows intensive discussions between the University Board of Trustees and the Alumni Board, means that Antioch College will continue to offer academic credits and degrees to current students.

Amazing effort on part of alumni to raise the money needed to keep operations going. And indicative of the commitment of the Board of Trustees, most of whom are alums, to be open-minded and reverse a highly controversial decision.

I will write more about this in the days to come but this is quite a story in collaboration.

Meanwhile, here's the New York Times/AP article, Antioch College to Stay Open, already running on its site and on the International Herald Tribune site.

And from the collaboration point-of-view, alumni et al were able to listen to the college-wide meeting that took place in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which went on for three hours this afternoon, via streaming audio, and to participate in an 90-person chat, where people were able to post questions that others answered, identify who was speaking, and clarify points. Meanwhile, there was live blogging coming from the meeting itself, documents sent around to alums --and posted to the alumni website--while we were listening.

High fives to everyone involved. As Steve Schwerner, college alum and professor emeritus, said, "That [meaning the Board of Trustees' reversal of its decision] was the easy part."

I've written a number of posts about the Antioch situation.

When students are assigned your old books

I've mentioned before my choice of Google alerts that includes virtual teams and, of course, narcissistically, my name. Too bad I'm not a bold face name or this might be some fun.

Instead, I've been receiving alerts in the past week generated by blog posts from students in a graduate course in Interactive Communication taught by Alex Halavais at Quinnipiac University. Turns out a chapter from our 1997 book, Virtual Teams, is this week's reading in what appears to be a true "the medium is the message" class. In addition to the traditional approach, i.e. read, write a paper, students are required to keep individual blogs where they discuss the material.

Halavais keeps his own blog, with perhaps the most unusual name I've encountered yet: a thaumaturgical compendium. Worth adding to your list. In his "about," he writes: "The blog is a compendium of things I find to be magical; many in fairly superficial ways. Language and technology makes all things magical in some way."

But, back to the title of this post: several students have been struck by our suggestion that virtual teams meet face-to-face. Absurd they write (well, no, they didn't use the word absurd, but still...). Made me think back on writing that book (twelve months spanning '95 and '96) and how challenged we were in explaining the web, domain names, and online communication. Though, at that point, we were a couple of years into our website, on email for 15, and veterans of dozens on "computer conferences" (who even remembers that term), we still had to argue with the copyeditor about whether the "dot" in our domain name was, in fact, a dot and not a period.

Blog on, Paul, Sasha, Jessica, Bob, and the rest of the class. Appears from the syllabus that your prof really knows what he's doing (present company notwithstanding).

Facebookers learn F2F 101

I suppose this was inevitable. The Sept 17, 2007, New Yorker has  a piece with the canny title, "Icebreaker Dept: Social Studies," by Michael Schulman, about a New York University dean having to explain face-to-face (F2F) to incoming students who only know how to have friends on Facebook.

The peril in getting to know classmates on the computer is that incoming undergraduates may forget how to do so in real life. That was the thinking behind “Facebook in the Flesh,” a seminar held during N.Y.U.’s freshman orientation. “Meeting new people face-to-face can be . . . intimidating,” a brochure read. “This fun, interactive workshop will get everyone talking as we build social networks in person.” The session took place at the Kimmel Center—it was scheduled at the same time as “Dude, Where’s My Class?”—and drew about thirty-five students, who spent the initial minutes sitting side by side in uncomfortable silence. Eventually, two girls struck up a conversation and realized, to their delight, that they were both from Long Island. (“Suffolk County?” “Me, too!”)

“Here’s what in-person networking is,” David Schachter, an assistant dean, began. “It’s face-to-face. It’s brief. It works best when there’s virtually nothing at stake except a few minutes of someone else’s time. And it’s social. It happens in the same space.”

Schachter went on to describe the benefits of live interaction...

Something I didn't know about Bucky

An article in the Berkshire Eagle (just seeing the name of the paper makes me want to move to Western Massachusetts) profiling Frederick H. Burkhardt, the former Bennington College president "who died earlier this week at 95," mentions his devotion to the faculty. Among those he recruited to the small Vermont institution were the extraordinary management thinker "Peter Drucker, influential psychoanalyst Eric Fromm and former United States Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov...In his years there, Martha Graham was also running her modern dance workshop at the college and Buckminister Fuller built a prototype of his Dymaxion house, an energy efficient structure."

Virtual team training at ICIC

Spent last Thursday at the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City here in Boston. ICIC is the brainchild of Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School professor who wrote the books on competition and who wrote the prescription for releasing the "wealth of the inner city," one of his phrases: See  "The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City,"  Harvard Business Review.

ICIC's mission from its website:

To promote economic prosperity in America’s inner cities through private sector engagement that leads to jobs, income and wealth creation for local residents. ICIC brings together business and civic leaders to drive innovation and action, transform thinking and accelerate inner city business growth and investment. 

Thus, ICIC works across boundaries--with clients, experts, donors, competitors, kids--and to assist, we provided our Virtual Team Training--evaluation, exercises and examples, with a virtual-team model and a little vision for the future.

ICIC, welcome to the world of virtual teams.

Good fortune at George School

The news is whipping around the wires, listservs, and the blogs: my alma mater, George School, the Quaker secondary school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, is the recipient of a huge bequest, this press release from the George School site:

George School to Receive $128.5 Million Gift
Issued: September 17, 2007

NEWTOWN, PA, Monday, September 17, 2007 — In what is being regarded as one of the largest single gifts to an existing independent school in the United States, George School is the recipient of an extraordinary donation from alumna Barbara Dodd Anderson, class of 1950. George School—a coeducational Friends (Quaker) boarding and day school for grades nine through twelve in Newtown, Pennsylvania—will receive payments that will total $128.5 million over a period of twenty years from an irrevocable charitable lead trust.

Ms. Dodd Anderson stated, "This gift is meant to honor not only my father, David Dodd, and his legacy, but also all of the teachers at George School who had such an impact on me and are so important to their students today. I want to help George School because of the excellence of its faculty and because it is a school without pretensions, where caring for and learning from each other are as important as academic success."

Turns out that David Dodd, Barbara's father, was Warren Buffet's professor at Columbia Business School. Dodd was "so impressed that after Mr. Buffett returned home to Nebraska and formed an investment partnership, Professor Dodd invested some of his own money for himself and his daughter," according to the NY Times article.

I could write for pages about the value of my George School education. By the time I got to Antioch College ("the little college that might" and see below), I had been trained in research and critical thinking. Our classes were small; we "majored" in particular areas (I was in the English and Literature stream, though I'm not certain it was called precisely that); and our teachers were deeply engaged in our pedagogy. My time there was also one of great sorrow: in five months during my junior year, five people important to the lives of me and my closest friends died, including, most sadly, my father, who died instantly of a massive heart attack when he was 57. I've written extensively about those difficult months, most recently in "When Everyone Dies," a short story based on those events.

Personal difficulty aside, I've been impressed with Nancy Starmer, head of school, who used to be at Milton Academy, and is the first woman to lead George School. And I am very happy that a school that educated many creative people, including my friend the artist, Neelon Crawford, is the recipient of this largess.

Been getting some hits on this post from sondheim.com, a discussion board about Stephen Sondheim, also a George School grad, as were Blythe Danner (mama, Gwyneth Paltrow) and George Segal.

"Google Docs in Plain English"

Google hardly needs my help in promotion but I'm more than happy to raise the flag again for my new best friends at CommonCraft. Got an email today from Lee LeFever, who, with Sachi LeFever, is cranking out the very clear and useful little videos on Web 2.0-y type stuff. This one is Google Docs in Plain English, adding to RSS in Plain English, Wikis in Plain English, and Social Bookmarking in Plain English.

Never heard of Google Docs? I hadn't until about nine months ago when I found myself on a planning call for Enterprise 2.0. A woman for whom I have the deepest respect - and whom I would call first if I started to think I'd completely lost my way in the 2.0-world - said, "Everyone's sending Google Docs around." They are/were? I was, as usual, out of it. Turns out that Google has cracked the collaboration nut, which, of course, has been cracked so many times before, but they made it even easier to share docs (i.e. real documents, spreadsheets, and such not) on the web.  It's an alternative to expensive enterprise knowledge management systems (oops, I recently was told that knowledge management is passe as a term) or home-cooking of web sites for document sharing.

What CommonCraft has done is to explain Google's solution, yet again "in plain English." Very well done, once more, Lee and Sachi. And by all means, keep churning out this stuff. Nothing I've seen in years has been this concise and useful. (Google Docs Team was the client for this so thanks to you guys too for commissioning these great conceptual artists.)

And, IT, HR, and Communication departments: Hire them!

Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA

Ellen Meister is a generous contributor to Zoetrope, where I met her. Over the past few years, she's let other Zoetropers peer into her experience as a first-time author with a two-book deal. Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA came out in hardcover in '06, as did the audio version narrated by Lisa Kudrow; paperback out now. Ellen's doing a virtual book tour, meaning interviews with her in lots of places.

Jump to take Ellen's tour with her:

Virtual Team Questionnaire from Croatia

Over the years, we've received scores of requests from graduate students around the world seeking help with their research on virtual teams, networks, and collaboration. In the past two years, there has been a sharp upturn in those requests. Yesterday, we received this note from Ernest Cutuk:

I am a master's student at the Graduate School of Economics & Business University of Zagreb, Croatia conducting research on virtual teams. The thesis' title is “Managing virtual teams in the project environment".

Should you have five minutes time, I would like to ask you to answer on questions listed in the questionnaire that you will find in the attachment and send it back to me via e-mail address: ernest.cutuk@zg.htnet.hr   

If you would like to receive the final result of the questionnaire, please be so kind to send me your e-mail...

If you'd like to participate in Ernest's research (we are), please read on to the jump page here to fill out his questionnaire. And...I encourage other students to send their surveys as well. If they're legit, we'll post them and we hope that you all will publish your findings back here too. Good luck, Ernest!

Bono edits Africa, July '07 Vanity Fair

I was going to wait to blog this great primer on Africa until I finished the whole issue but that would be selfish.

Oprah's on the cover whispering to George Clooney: “The children of mothers who have a primary education are 40 percent more likely to reach the age of five.”

Annie Leibovitz’s photo essay of celebs having “a conversation about Africa” is superb: Don Cheadle to Barack Obama to Muhammad Ali to Queen Rania of Jordan to Bono to Condoleeza Rice to George Bush to Desmond Tutu to Brad Pitt to … Madonna…Warren Buffet to the Gates to Oprah…and finally back to Don Cheadle. I’d like to see these photos in person; slide show is here.

There’s a short essay on science (we’re all out of Africa), “Generation Kenya,” on the confusions of a young nation, by Bingyavanga Wainana, writer-in-residence at Union College in upstate New York, Sebastian Junger (A Perfect Storm, etc) on oil, China, and Darfur, and “The Continental Shelf,” a superb roundup on Africa’s premier writers by Elissa Schappell and Rob Spillman. Among the superstars is Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who just won the Orange Prize for Half of a Yellow Sun.

Zoetropers remember her: she workshopped there too.

Even NPR is worried about Antioch

My old friend, John McChesney (take no offense at the "old," John :), who taught  literature at Antioch for six of its most rambunctious years, went back for the annual college reunion last weekend and posted this story to "All Things Considered." More typically of late, John has been reporting from Iraq, where he's been embedded with the Arkansas National Guard (and worrying his friends to death).

I was not surprised to get a call from John when the Antioch news broke. Everyone who's ever loved the place is worried and talking...And the college chat rooms are running wild with rumor and innuendo. As an alum, I too grieve for the Antioch that we all loved; as someone who's served on the board and who's had to make hard business decisions, I am relieved that the Board of Trustees pulled a sinking ship to drydock before it took on too much water.

But, I'm very uncertain how to reach my fellow alums, who are disturbed, furious, and hurt about being left out of the decision. Process is very important, always and forever, but even when it's flawed, the right decisions often are made. We need all our diplomats to step forward now and work together to build a viable college for the 21st century.

Antioch goes on co-op

For any of its graduates, Antioch College's co-op program, which sent its students out to work for about six months of every year, was its crown jewel. Out in the real world, the thinking went, students would learn how to put their ideas and their ideals into practice. I loved it as it gave me time to apply what I was learning and to think about  my next steps. The Board of Trustees, which governs both the college and the five graduate and continuing-ed campuses across the US, has, in effect, sent the college on co-op. For the next four years, the college will close as a study takes place to redesign a 21st-century institution.

The NY Times, AP, LA Times, and just about every other publication that can get its hands around this story has been covering it. Most, including an unthoughtful op-ed in the NY Times, focus on the superficial aspects of the story -- Antioch's rep as a haven for mad(wo)men, where faculty let the students run wild, and the administration offers the same to the faculty, while the trustees look the other way.

I am a proud graduate of the 1970 class of Antioch College and a former member of the Board of Trustees. The cacophony of complaints that is blasting out of Yellow Springs, Ohio, the beautiful little village where Antioch is situated, lacks grounding in the reality of running a small liberal arts college without an endowment. The NY Times printed four letters to the editor in response to the knee-jerk op-ed it ran on June 17. But it didn't run mine:

To the Editor:
Michael Goldfarb’s swan song for Antioch College (“Where the Arts Were Too Liberal,” Op-Ed, June 17, 2007) violates two key principles of obituary writing. First, be certain the “person” is dead; and second, fact-check the forensics before reporting cause of death.

Graduating from high school at 92

It's never too late, at least, for Julius Blank, who received his Petersburg, Virginia, high school diploma last week, just a tad late - three-quarters of a century to be exact. My goal is to be as wild and crazy as Jules is at his age. And I might. He's my father's first cousin. Congrats to Jules and all the other grads, young and old.

Antioch closing/reopening on CNN

CNN is reporting on the close-open case of Antioch College. Who knew my beloved alma-mama could cause such interest?

Antioch Adventure Continues-Boston Alum Meeting

Further to developments at Antioch College, I received this email today from Barbara Waldruff, Chair, Antioch College Alumni Group of New England, a meeting, fellow nearby alums, June 26, 2007, with one of the trustees, as per below:

Dear fellow Antioch alumni,

I certainly hope I'm not breaking the news to you that a week ago the Antioch University Board of Trustees voted to close the College, at least temporarily, in July of 2008. (E-mail me if you'd like to receive relevant documents and links, including a copy of President Lawry's letter to the Antioch community.) This news came as a shock to every member of the Boston alumni planning group. We thought many local alums would be eager for more information about

The reasons for the trustees' decision

The short-term implications for the College, its people, and its physical and financial assets

The proposed restructuring of the College and reopening in 2012

How those of us who care about Antioch and its values and traditions might be able to help

We asked Dan Fallon, Class of 1961, Vice Chair of the Antioch University Board of Trustees and the Program Director of Higher Education at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, to meet with College alumni in New England, and he graciously agreed. The time and place of the meeting will be

Tuesday, June 26
6:00 p.m.
320 Dudley Street, Brookline
(my house)

Put it on your calendar now! If you plan to come, your RSVP would be greatly appreciated. Just reply to this e-mail. If you need directions, please ask. Ample free parking is available on Dudley Street, and on request we'll arrange transportation from a nearby Green Line stop.

We of the planning group encourage you to attend. This will be your best chance to learn about the important changes at the College. And we hope you'll encourage your Antioch friends who may not be on our e-mail list to attend as well.

Sincerely,
Barbara Wallraff
Chair, Antioch College Alumni Group of New England

Roland Merullo Reading June 17 at Solstice '07

Solstice Summer Writers, whose inaugural workshop in '05 I've posted about and posted about, has a fine roster of writers who read each night. These performances are open to the public. For both last year and this, I've been unable to attend the workshop itself because of a conflict with Enterprise 2.0, where I do a bit of speaking myself. However, I would never miss the chance to hear Roland Merullo read. And, if you're in the Boston area, I encourage you to come--7:30 PM, Sun, June 17, '07, Pine Manor College, Founder's Room (Main Building), Chestnut Hill, MA, directions. Here's Roland's bio from the Solstice site:

Creative nonfiction writer and novelist Roland Merullo began his career as an author in 1991 when his Leaving Losapas was named “novel of the year” by Boston Magazine. His nonfiction work includes Passion for Golf: In Pursuit of the Innermost Game (2000) and Revere Beach Elegy, winner of the 2002 Massachusetts Book Award. He has written for the New York Times, Newsweek, Outside, The Boston Sunday Globe Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine. Roland’s novels include A Russian Requiem; Revere Beach Boulevard (finalist for the PEN New England/L.L. Winship Prize); In Revere, In Those Days (a Booklist Editors’ Choice); and, most recently, A Little Love Story (2005) [ed's note: also, Golfing with God, and soon-to-be published, Breakfast with Buddha]. Fluent in Russian, Roland has served on the faculty of Pine Manor College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. He has taught writing at Bennington and Amherst Colleges as well as at the Writers in Paradise Conference. This is his second appearance at the Solstice Conference.

Reading also with Roland on Sunday night are children and young adults author, Norma Fox Mazer, and poet Cornelius Eddy.

Other writers who'll read in the coming week include: Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog, e.g.), Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Coronado, etc.) and poets Stephen Dunn, the Pulitzer Prize Winner, and Meg Kearney (An Unkindness of Ravens and The Secret of Me), who also directs Solstice and is a very good friend).

Even if you never go to readings, you won't regret spending a summer night like this.

Disclosure: Roland is my fiction-writing mentor, or as I prefer to call him, my mean Russian gymnastics coach. He is a no-nonsense reader and kind editor, in short, the best.

Antioch College to close :( - and maybe reopen :)

Congratulations to The Board of Trustees of Antioch University, on which body I once served, for taking a very difficult decision, voting to close my alma mater, Antioch College, effective July 1, 2008. Dayton Business Journal reports at 4:29 PM EDT Tuesday, June 12, 2007:

Burdened by declining enrollment and financial problems, Antioch College will suspend operations at its Yellow Springs campus July 1, 2008.

The college's board, which voted June 9 to close the Yellow Springs campus, said it intends to possibly reopen a "state-of-the-art" campus in 2012 if sufficient financial funding can be secured.

"The decision was taken in light of the college's very fragile financial circumstances, resulting from low enrollments and insufficient funding from other sources, including endowment income and gifts," Antioch President Steven Lawry said in a statement Tuesday.

The college has 330 students for the 2006-2007 year, down 36 percent from its 1997 enrollment of 522.

Tuition at Antioch College costs $26,492 per year.

Antioch College has been synonymous with alternatives in higher education for nearly 200 years. Horace Mann, the Bostonian who married Mary Peabody of The Peabody Sisters as in Megan Marshall's fine book, founded Antioch College in 1852.

When I attended Antioch in the '60s, there were 2,000 students, alternating work and study programs around the world. In five years, I went from Yellow Springs, Ohio, where the college is situated, to New York (sold books at Barnes and Noble at 18th and Fifth), to Los Angeles (worked as admin in USC's grad psychology program) to Yellow Springs (managing editor of the Antioch Record, the college newspaper) to Oxford University (studied Elizabethan drama and philosophy) to the Yucatan, Mexico (studied Mayan culture) and back to Yellow Springs to graduate. Education like this is hard to come by.

Antioch has fallen to the pressures of maintaining a small liberal arts college with an even smaller endowment in the 21st century.

Specifying four years to come up with a state-of-the-art plan for a new college is quite a challenge, a radical one. But Antioch is deserving of nothing less.

Standing O to the board for having the guts to do this.

NB: The college's closing will not imperil the fine Antioch University graduate schools across the US. In fact, it may strengthen them as the graduate schools have been subsidizing the college for many years.