New Faces of 1976

When the aging college president retired, he did not give his successor any advice, but instead left four numbered envelopes with instructions to open them in sequence as campus crises arose. Sure enough, trouble came soon, and the young chief executive opened the first envelope. The message inside: "Balance your budget. " When new problems developed, the president twice more consulted his silent mentors. "Form a committee," read the second note; "Make a new five-year plan, "said the third. After a period of relative calm, another crisis ensued, and the president, after opening the fourth envelope, slumped in his chair. The suggestion: "Prepare four envelopes."

When this apocryphal tale was told at a recent conference of small college presidents, it was greeted with uneasy laughter. The fourth envelope is often too close at hand. Given the problems in higher education--entrenched faculties, rising expenses, enrollments expected to fall--college presidents can no longer expect long terms of easy-paced stewardship. Indeed their estimated tenure today is three to five years.

This year 112 colleges are getting new presidents. A six-school sampler of problems and prospects:

BROWN UNIVERSITY (6,700 students; Providence, R.I.). Now president of Minnesota's Carleton College, Howard Swearer, 44, is changing posts because "I decided I needed a change of context, a new set of problems and a new set of challenges. Brown offers all of those." Indeed, it does. The 213-year-old school has suffered through a variety of ailments the past few years--a deficit of $10.6 million since 1970, student strikes, minority student protests. His principal goal, says Swearer, is "to encourage the various constituencies to work together to determine what the institution's priorities are, and then put those priorities above those of their own constituency." High on Swearer's list of priorities is a fund-raising campaign--Brown's $98 million endowment is relatively small by Ivy League standards. He also wants to find a method of minimizing the danger of necessary reduction in faculty. As teaching staffs are pared, it is usually the younger, untenured faculty who are let go, and it is important, says Swearer, that those older, tenured teachers who remain do not get stale. One innovation that Swearer is considering: summer institutes for new teaching and research techniques, training in related academic disciplines and guidance in searching out other vocations.

TUFTS UNIVERSITY (6,500 students; Medford, Mass.). For French-born Jean Mayer, 56, an internationally known nutrition expert, the presidency of Tufts is but a single line in a seven-page single-spaced curriculum vitae that includes medals for his role in the World War II French Resistance, appointments to numerous presidential commissions and more than a dozen academic posts. Nonetheless, Mayer plans to devote his full energies to Tufts. He hopes to open New England's first school of veterinary medicine there, and in Tufts' graduate schools to emphasize those programs "where jobs will be waiting at the other end." He also plans to have every student take at least one course a year in decision making. Says he: "The whole weight of universities today is on the analytical study of problems, but no effort is made, no system is applied to get those elements of information back together to make decisions possible."

BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY (3,000 students; Lewisburg, Pa.). Dennis O'Brien, 45, a Hegelian philosopher by training (degrees from Yale and the University of Chicago) and most recently dean of the faculty of Middlebury College, was told by a fellow administrator that he would spend two-thirds of his time off campus raising money. He would like to lower that to one-third. Says he: "To be a salesman for Bucknell, I'm going to have to spend enough time on campus to be knowledgeable about my product." To raise the faculty's appreciation of Bucknell's "common needs and interests," O'Brien plans to hold "metaphysical breakfasts" where faculty from different departments can discuss major educational topics. "At too many places," he says, "individual departments function as noncommunicating intellectual fiefdoms." O'Brien plans to teach one course for seniors called "Last Chance Philosophy" and to invite representatives of such institutions as CBS, U.S. Steel or the Metropolitan Opera to participate in courses examining the roles they play. The purpose: to bring students closer to "the realities of American society."

BARNARD COLLEGE (2,000 women, Manhattan). After administrative positions at Radcliffe, Sarah Lawrence and Brown, Jacqueline Anderson Mattfeld, 50, takes on the presidency of one of the Seven Sisters just when it is being eyed acquisitively by Columbia University, its big brother across the street. Although Barnard has run a deficit in each of the last few years ($500,000 in 1975-76), the college and its $24 million endowment are nonetheless attractive to Columbia. Mattfeld, a Goucher graduate, argues a partnership, yes, a merger, never. Discovering some "ambiguous wording" in the intercorporate agreement with Columbia, Mattfeld had Barnard trustees write out a specific mandate calling for the college's continued autonomy. At the same time, Mattfeld must allay the fear of some of her faculty that they will lose invitational teaching assignments at Columbia if she refuses the university's overtures to merge with it.

MILLS COLLEGE (1,018 women; Oakland, Calif.). An ambassador at the United Nations for special political affairs and a former foreign service officer, Barbara McClure White, 55, wanted to switch to a career in higher education. "The Mills offer came along at the right time," she notes. A Mount Holyoke graduate, White is firmly committed to the importance of women's colleges and hopes to attract more "resumers"--over-22-year-olds coming back to finish their liberal arts education. "They are highly motivated and among our best students." White also wants to introduce weekend or intensive vacation study programs to help older women who have been raising families find new or different careers. "To have only one career," says the former diplomat, "is a waste of human talent."

WELLS COLLEGE (515 women; Aurora, N.Y.). At the 1972 Democratic Convention, Frances Tarlton ("Sissy") Farenthold, fresh from a defeat in the Texas gubernatorial primary, was nominated for the vice-presidential slot on the McGovern ticket in a symbolic gesture by the Women's Caucus. Her being chosen as the first female of Wells' thirteen presidents, however, was anything but symbolic. The school, which has a modest endowment of $8 million, needed someone of note to help boost sagging enrollment. On the job since March, Farenthold, 49, has made this fall's entering class the largest in six years, but still sees recruitment as her biggest problem. Farenthold, a Vassar alumna with a University of Texas law degree, never gave "a minute's thought to being a college president" till she went to speak at Wells and was subsequently offered the post. Directed to cut costs without touching faculty salaries or positions, she preaches "the ethics of less." She has moved out of the oak-paneled president's office, with its marble fireplace, to more modest digs, where she plans to install a Franklin stove. Farenthold's chief academic interest is in educating women for the professions. As for her own new appointment, she notes that she is one of half a dozen women taking president's slots formerly occupied by men only. These days "it's a high risk job," she says, adding cheerfully: "There's a possible analogy to the blacks who have complained that they started getting municipal jobs just when the inner city became impossible."

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