Jeff Cason:

WFP

Acknowledges that this is a difficult time, both in CA and VT

This process (WFP)  is coming to an end soon and we will be moving toward a future place in which we can make important new advances

There is a lot of pent-up creative energy we want to channel

Fundraising campaign

We are moving toward a fundraising campaign and need to start it on a good note in which we have proven that we are responsibly stewarding our resources

A slightly reconfigured articulation of the transformational goals, which emerged from Envisioning Middlebury, will be the pillars of  the campaign:

• student-centric focus on what expertise they need (communication skills, knowledge about the environment, data / technical skills, etc.). We define and deliver on these.
• Global footprint – we have this (and this makes us stand out) but we need to use it/ connect it in a way that makes it into a global network
• Access – for students needing financial aid, for diverse populations

Translating the Envisioning Middlebury document into something the board can approve for fundraising, here are some elements that focus on the Institute:

• Immersive learning experience – what if EVERY student got this at MIIS with no need to pay extra? Can have access to study abroad sites, etc.
• Truly making MIIS part of the Midd network for Midd Undergrad students – bringing cohorts of college students to MIIS on a regular basis. Right now working on a program with NPTS and CNS. MIIS could be the destination for 200 students per semester. Maybe not just Midd undergrads, but (like schools abroad) also from Harvard, Michigan, Mississippi, Bowdoin, etc.
• We would have to emphasize/ promote housing to potential donors, as this is a key issue that needs to be resolved.

Q&A with participants

Bob McCleery: We get that something has to be done. Concerned about the process… Our global network here is people-to-people contacts. This HR-driven process has taken power out of the hands at MIIS and there’s been no consultation with the affected members / programs of the MIIS community.

Lyuba Zarsky: Being out here, we hear that there’s growing impatience at MIIS with MIIS financial performance, and that we have a year to turn things around. Is this true? What options are being considered for the long-term future of the institute?

JC: Not a timeline like that. These issues are raised in most faculty fora. President Patton has consistently said that she came to Middlebury because of the Institute, and she needs time to make it right. I am trying to change perceptions about MIIS in VT, and have said to the faculty that what Midd did wrong after acquiring MIIS was neglecting it after acquisition, perhaps because of the heavy faculty vote against the acquisition. So things that needed to be done at the outset were not done. Monterey is not the problem. Finances are problematic in VT and CA. David Provost, CFO, is incredibly transparent, and laid things bare. Held open meeting on finances focusing on Monterey shortly after I spoke with VT faculty. At the end of that session, one of the usual opponents to MRY said that it seems there are good plans moving forward, so maybe it’s time to let go of the anger from the past.

Jeff Langholz: you’ve been covering our budget shortfall every year for many years – If MIDD and schools abroad make up for loss by filling holes with the endowment, should we also do so? Attitudes around this?

JC: Again, trying to change the dialogue away from othering MRY. Some faculty there are now standing up to say, “These people are us.”

The board wants to think of MIDD as one institution, some faculty who were opposed are coming around, and we have great supporters like Jessica Teets.

Tsuneo Akaha: I’m getting a much more optimistic / positive sense from you now, by saying that if we are to get to a better place, some things first have to happen… Yet you are now shining some light at the end of the tunnel, helping us see a longer-term context.

JC: This has been a compressed timeframe to look at how we can work better. We’re in a challenging transition phase, where there are uncertainties about what the end result of WFP will be, exactly who won’t be here, how we’ll cover gaps. At the college many signed up for early retirement as a result of WFP, and we’ll have to make adaptations there too. Hope we can now pivot toward more hope.

Cas Shulman-Mora: Need more transparency and continuity of transparency. Feels like sands are shifting from day to day, messaging is inconsistent, making it hard to trust the process and the end goal, what it means for MIIS, for programs, for individuals. To get to optimism, really need that accountability. Spent 1.5 years envisioning, hard to envision something we won’t be a part of.

JC: In working with the Council at MIIS, and also with the faculty at Midd, we are trying to put a premium on transparency. That may not have always been the case. I recognize that we are starting from a low-trust environment. Costs have been increasing every year. Some financial adjustment is needed. We’re trying to break an inertia in spending with an aggressive plan to reduce costs. This is an abrupt shock. We’ve tried to economize on non-compensation spending, and have run out of options there. That’s why we’re now engaged in WFP to work on compensation spending. Dialectical relationship between legal/ HR impulses to do things internally consistently and in compliance with the law, and on the other hand, curricular need to maintain strong programs. The monumental budgetary about face is real. There’s no underhanded other story / hidden agenda. The explicit agenda is alarming enough.

Philipp Bleek: Some people will take the ISP and it may provide cost savings. Okay. But then what? If the ISPs don’t meet the goal of savings, will it be contract non-renewal? Some early contract terminations? I know transparency about this process will be difficult. As a program chair, do I have input? Who makes and how do we make the challenging choices in the likely case that ISPs won’t get us where we need to be? This is the central issue/ the elephant in the room.

JDJ: Different answers for faculty and staff. For faculty, we do have the lever of non-renewal of contracts. For staff, the list of options is even shorter. Every time the question is asked, the answer has been: We are committed to the voluntary plan. You described the involuntary mechanisms, and why cutting can’t be done willy-nilly. We have been trying to design a program that is sufficiently attractive and targeted so that it will be doable so that we can get there with the voluntary mechanism.

March 11 is the application deadline for ISPs. March 12th we’ll have greater information. But we also know that the # of faculty eligible vastly exceeds the # of cuts we are trying to achieve. This will then lead us to one or another of different paths. I’ve not been any part of any conversation of a secret plan B to use – we all know the mechanisms. Planning around how to use those mechanisms will come sometime after March 12.

Philipp Bleek: People weighing the separation plan want to know how secure their jobs are.

JDJ: Yes, your jobs are less secure than they were. We can’t presume contracts will be renewed as easily as in the past. I say that not to make you / us feel worse, but to acknowledge the reality. So if you are thinking about one of these packages, please be clear-eyed.

For faculty, 56 are eligible – one faculty member said to me we should receive 56 apps as there’s always the chance to rescind. Others have worried that applying for an ISP would be viewed as wanting to leave the school. So we have a firewall stopping JDJ and JC from seeing who has inquired into ISPs.

Jessica Varnum: This optimism is overshadowed by cutting costs in a way that makes it so that we are cutting revenue. If faculty member X leaves, students who were coming here for what he/she offers will not come.

JC: You are right, this is a risk.

Eva Gudbergsdottir: Another risk is that current students, in talking to prospective students, won’t be so comfortable telling those students to come here. Are you doing anything to help with this situation?

JDJ: Yes, this is a time that is very tough, we don’t want students to be impacted by morale issues if possible. For over 10 years we’ve been increasing tuition fees much faster/ higher than inflation, and even higher than the higher education index. The urgency of doing this cost cutting is real. Increasing the cost structure is not an option. We either believe in the future of the institution or we don’t.

Bill Potter: Trying to be optimistic, but I worry about the potential that after this year of cost cutting we find ourselves unable to meet our balance between revenue and costs. What would be reassuring for me is that the powers that be who developed this business plan (among the many choices out there) that they indicate where they may have erred, that we with this plan are making it harder to increase revenues in the future. Things could go wrong, students could communicate to prospective students about the problems. Should we pay attention to alternative business models.

JC: There’s always the possibility that we are making a mistake. We do want to focus on revenue. Increasing undergrads here could be a strong revenue growth/ foundation for the institute by diversifying revenue streams. All ideas for revenue generation are welcome here. We will need to prioritize, but that should be part of our thinking.

Marie Butcher: Is there the possibility to change the timeline and do this more gradually? We’ve been tasked with re-envisioning things in really creative ways, it’s exhausting and counter-intuitive to come up with ideas to generate revenue and then lose the people who can deliver on the ideas.

JDJ: Yes, it’s hard to imagine a future you are not a part of. We can get savings from people opting for the associate faculty status. Programs have been asking if they can come up with program plans. So if you have ideas like this, please share.

Moyara Ruehsen: In some ways this process has been slow, not fast. But are we starving product quality? Should we instead be terminating some programs and focusing on those where demand is increasing? It’s not that any programs are not valuable, but market demand may have changed, and we may have to cut our losses. It’s hard to do this because we are such a small tight-knit community.

JC: If internal conversations here lead us to this, it’s worth having on the table. We can’t keep proliferating programs and expect all to thrive. 14 of my 25 years at Midd we’ve had MIIS. The MBA conversation was happening from the beginning..

JDJ: Everything you have said is correct, and this question has come up elsewhere. This is not meant to be a surreptitious way to close programs. Like you, some have spoken about cutting programs rather than taking a few people from different programs. We have not explicitly decided to adopt this.

But if you reduce programs by 25%, can they deliver the quality?

JDJ: Target is to go back to 2014 faculty numbers, when we had 100 more students. We don’t have a plan to cut programs. But we can’t guarantee that we will have the same portfolio of programs 5 years from now.

Grace O’Dell: If 2014 is an ideal, are we going to bring our tuition prices back to that time as well?

JDJ: No, our cuts are a dollar figure. I am not idealizing 2014.

Avner Cohen: To be blunt, it’s clear to us the Board gave this order. I understand their concerns, it’s justified. But there are things they don’t understand about MIIS: morale, academic integrity, the profound and lasting damage their directive is causing. The leadership of Midd needed/ needs to let them know what the negative impact could be.

JC: The board is fully aware of the morale challenges this WFP process is causing. (They know this from the private sector, which has similar issues). But the Board saw the increasing deficit (which we caused by adding lots of people) and the headcount. They told us we need to move more quickly about achieving this objective.

How did we get here? We increased headcount by having no solid way to limit our increases. We used to have the VPs all in the staff resources council deciding together who to add. This led to horsetrading, which led to an increase in staff numbers. Not sure how it happened with faculty. (Now it’s just JC, CFO, and Counsel making these decisions as the Ways and Means committee).

Toni Thomas: We’ve been talking about Envisioning Midd, Leapfrog, etc., talking about moving in more online and hybrid directions. But few of us have the ability to do this and do it well, we need support. Concerned that we are so far behind and our attention is all on WFP. How can we keep moving forward in a timely manner with the support we need?

JC: We need financial surplus to be able to invest in this. Better quicker than slower. For instance, there’s a proposal now for a global operations program person. We know we need to invest in that, but can’t yet. Reducing headcount is NOT the end of the story. Need to choose things we do and don’t do.

Barry Olsen: Shifting from quantitative to qualitative: Morale is extremely low, as caused by the process. 2 questions: 1. What is you plan to raise morale? 2. When? Can it start now? Or let this fester first and then we’ll pick up the pieces? The way this was undertaken (to manage risk, we understand) was…. thoughtlessly, to say the least. For me, I’m still trying to come to terms to an institution that I love with a mission that I love that has punched many of us in the stomach. I really care about your answers.

JDJ: Very well articulated. Do we start morale boosting before everyone leaves or let it fester and then you pick up the pieces? Neither. We want to reduce the festering period, we want to maximize transparency. We will need to think about this sometime after March 11th. We wouldn’t couch this as a morale-boosting campaign, but will try to share sparks of a glimpse at the future.

JC: A morale-boosting campaign may not land well right now. But hope to shorten the period. It has to come from both the people who are here with support from the leadership.

JDJ: appreciate the genuine passion about the institution.

Julie Johnson: Contradiction: You say there will be a lot more information on March 11, but applying is just asking for information. So you won’t know any more on March 11 because it’s actually May 3rd.

JDJ: System wide we’ll have more info – less so for faculty at MIIS. We are not going to realize any savings from faculty uptake for at least a year.

JC: 90% of the staff who sign up for ISPs will take it up. So we know if we are playing with $5m or $7m being resolved elsewhere.

JDJ: It’s not entirely fungible, but it is part of the entire system.

Going for 17 faculty positions (14 net with addition of 2 Chinese T&I and 1 TLM).

If we don’t get to 14 net, we will see what we have to do. Some contracts won’t be renewed. (That’s plan B). If we still don’t make it, then what is Plan C?

Anna Vassilieva: The pain comes from the commitment and the passion and ability we have. We know our current model is not working. So let’s please do an exercise as faculty to constructively and creatively engage in creating new models. Invite experts in higher red to give lectures to help us. To ensure our participation in this vision of creating new models and to make stakeholder contributions, can we engage in an exercise to invest in our future. Can we work with Midd College colleagues to do 15 minute presentations from us to get them excited about what we do, engage them in the development of models for ALL of Midd as one institution.

JC: Yes, let’s talk about how to structure some of this.

Jason Martel: As we are one institution, it seems the cost difference between a MIIS MA and a Midd MA is a real problem.

JC: MA in language is much more expensive here than at Midd Language Schools.

Marie Butcher: Moving the conversation from headcount to monetary figure is helpful. If other revenue streams come forward / are projected, will this be taken into consideration? (rental properties? Morse bequest scholarships? External tuition funding?)

JDJ: All of this is in the profit & loss statement. But macro issues is that our revenues are smaller than costs. But if we see revenue increases in the future, will that impact faculty WFP now? No, probably not, because revenues are delayed.

Philipp Bleek: In a way, the ISPs are a very generous approach compared to instead doing a coherent approach of making cuts. Part of me says great, but part of me REALLY worries about the institutional health that may be undercut if we lose people we can’t afford to lose.

Thor Sawin: We do have to recognize parts of Midd that are making cuts despite not being deficit generators: For instance, Language Schools have achieved a 17% reduction in their operational budget despite the fact that they are a net revenue maker. We operate at a loss, but are being asked only 10% rather than our share of the deficit.