A shared commitment to Lafayette

Dear Fellow Trustees:

With the turn of Lafayette College’s academic calendar, I am pleased to share some thoughts for our coming years together. Bob Sell chaired this Board of Trustees masterfully for eight years, and we shall always be indebted to him for his dedicated leadership. His guidance has contributed importantly to our competitive position today, setting us up for greater success to come. It is our duty now to pursue that destiny with vigor.

The Lafayette community has tens of thousands of caring and attentive members who together comprise a powerful and visionary group of constituents.

Our students are smart, active, and engaged. They are dreamers and doers; our greatest inspiration and our raison d’etre. And on every occasion with them, I am the better for it. Our effort on their behalf is a noble mission.

Our applicant pool has grown steadily, but today’s environment requires continued application growth and stronger yield. Achieving both depends on delivering the most robust student experience possible, inside and outside the classroom. As The Chronicle of Higher Education recently noted, enrollment declines are expected to have a major or moderate budget impact at most institutions. Lafayette is no exception. Serving our students exceptionally well remains one of our clearest competitive advantages.

I have the deepest admiration for our faculty. Their commitment to our students, scholarship, and the institution is extraordinary. Nowhere is that more evident than Commencement Weekend, when expressions of gratitude between students and professors remind us of the remarkable relationships that define Lafayette. Our faculty are among our greatest strengths. While important work remains around shared governance and compensation, I am confident we will make meaningful progress together.

Parents of our students are deeply invested in Lafayette’s mission and success. Their children are naturally their first concern, but they also speak passionately about the College’s future. How might we engage them more constructively? Perhaps a reactivated Parents Council could strengthen the Board’s connection to this ever-changing constituency.

Our administration and staff, led by President Nicole Hurd, are also critical partners in our work together. She, of course, is our chief executive officer and leads the entire institution with wide-ranging responsibilities touching all members of the Lafayette community. It is now my honor to become her close partner at the College. We meet and correspond regularly as I continue my transition into this role. The College is fortunate to have her at the helm.

Behind the President, we have a gifted team of dedicated professionals, and we will soon be welcoming Kristen Daily, our new VP for Communications and Marketing. As the Senior Leadership Team’s roots at Lafayette deepen, we will continue to set our performance expectations high and model an aligned organizational culture to best position us for success.

Please spend time individually with each member of the Senior Leadership Team. This talented group keeps us informed, manages risk, exercises sound stewardship, and helps deliver an exceptional student experience beyond the classroom. The outstanding staff they lead are equally essential to Lafayette’s success.

Our community also defines who we are. College Hill, Greater Easton, and the Lehigh Valley are at once our hosts and our home. Easton’s remarkable renaissance has become one of Lafayette’s distinguishing strengths and an important part of our story. We are fortunate to have several local voices on the Board, and perhaps there is room for even more.

Our alumni are among our most committed advocates—and certainly our most generous supporters. The success of our coming capital campaign depends upon an informed, engaged, and inspired alumni community. That requires us to listen carefully, communicate thoughtfully, and lead with transparency.

Which brings us to the Board, last, but never least. We’re a dedicated, hard-working group. I continue to marvel at the experience, wisdom, and generosity around our Board table. You contribute varied and deep expertise to our discussions, official and otherwise. Our deliberations are respectful and collegial, and frequently weighty.

As always, the Board’s composition will be monitored, looking for ways to enhance the knowledge and chemistry of the whole. And we will take a fresh look at Board communications, leaning into constructive transparency.

One procedural change we will test this year is reinstating brief committee reports at every Board meeting. Committee work is often where our deepest discussions occur, and all trustees should benefit from those conversations. Most of us cannot read every committee docket, so concise reporting will help keep everyone informed.

As much as we have and should embrace the power of “and,” this Board must also appreciate the discipline of “or.” The College is financially strong, but it cannot afford to be all things to all people. Our vision may be guided by “and,” but at the same time, it will be necessary to make choices. There is no daylight between administrative leadership and me on this.

Together, the seven constituencies noted above define Lafayette. And, as Brian Rosenberg points out in his book Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education, these groups all have deep commitments to the academy and a sense of ownership. This is one reason why it can be so difficult to achieve institutional transformation at these places so invested in personal transformation. 

And, indeed, Lafayette belongs to each of us: students, faculty, parents, alumni, administration/staff, community, and board members. It is ours to share, to steward, to nourish, together, even when the optimal path forward is cleared only by vigorous deliberation and compromise. I am inspired by the potential for further greatness we can achieve by working together in good faith. The words of Scottish spiritualist David Spangler come to mind: “Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and know the other.”

With all of the tangible challenges and opportunities that lie before us, I am certain we will rise to the occasion. The work will be hard. Decisions may come with great difficulty. And this is precisely why we must be able to speak frankly and trust unequivocally. We need real solutions to very real issues, and if we act as a community, not just in proximity, our chances are good.

At the beginning of this note, I mentioned our ”destiny,” not as a predetermined fate, but as the future we can achieve through wise choices and faithful stewardship. Lafayette’s destiny is to be a proud, select, and selective institution of higher education; a community of caring, committed, truthful, and trusting teachers and learners, administrators, staff, alumni, family, and neighbors; and a place that values engaged learning, community belonging, responsible citizenship, purposeful sustainability, and institutional excellence. Reaching that future is not guaranteed. It is our responsibility to improve the odds, together, and to hold one another accountable along the way.

Humbly,

Jefferson W. Kirby ’84
Chair, Board of Trustees
board-chair@lafayette.edu