October 28, 2004

Antioch receives $9 million to implement renewal plan

By Robert Mihalek

Antioch College has secured nearly $9 million in gifts and pledges to help implement the renewal plan, a sweeping overhaul of the college’s curriculum and major upgrade of campus facilities.

Rick Jurasek, the interim Antioch president, called the acquisition of the funds “the logjam breaker” that will make possible the renewal plan, which calls for changing the college’s curriculum into a program based on experiential communities in which groups of students study together under the tutelage of several professors.

The donations are a “starting point for a very complex transformation of a teaching and learning institution,” he said.

Jurasek said that within the last month the funds had either been gifted or bequeathed to implement the college’s plan. He said that three quarters of the money came from four sources, and the rest is from multiple, smaller sources. Jurasek said that he could not name the four large donors at this time, though Dan Kaplan, the chairman of the Antioch University Board of Trustees, said that a majority of the funds were donated by a former trustee and a current trustee.

Jurasek said that money for the renewal plan has come in sooner than had been expected.

“It’s pretty phenomenal that Antioch has such strong supporters who believe in the renewal plan, who were willing to step up to the plate so we could begin implementation so quickly,” Kaplan said.

In practical terms, Jurasek said, the funds will pay for the transition costs needed to implement the renewal plan. For instance, he said, the funds will be used to pay for faculty and staff training; marketing; on- and off-campus program development; and infrastructure upgrades. In addition, the funds will compensate for an anticipated initial decline of student enrollment as the new curriculum is put into place, Jurasek said.

By receiving these donations, Jurasek said, Antioch will be able to initiate a “full-scale” implementation of the experiential learning community (ELC) program for first-year students at the start of the 2005 academic year.

In addition to the donation, Kaplan credited the “good work” of Jurasek and Ann Filemyr, the dean of faculty who is in charge of curricular development under the renewal plan, for helping to speed up the plan’s implementation.

The renewal plan had originally called for running pilot ELC programs next fall and fully executing the program in the fall of 2006.

An ELC will consist of 30 to 45 students and two to three faculty members who will team teach, integrating different academic disciplines into each learning community.

Filemyr said that all first-year students next year will “choose between a variety” of ELCs that Antioch will offer. Each first-year student will take one ELC in the fall and one in the spring.

Among those ELCs, Filemyr said, is “Embodied Mind/Thinking Body,” a learning community currently being developed by professors of philosophy, dance and biology. The ELC will offer 16 credits, a full-time enrollment for a student, Filemyr said.

A description of the course, as read by Filemyr, says, “Through lectures, discussions, labs and movement, students will consider how the physical is the basis for our experience and understanding of the world and our place in it.”

Jurasek said that the donated funds are not considered part of Antioch’s $65 million capital campaign, which was officially launched a year ago as an effort to increase the college’s endowment, among other things.

The Antioch University Board of Trustees unanimously approved the renewal plan, “Experiential Learning at Antioch College: A Strategy for Renewal,” in June.

Devised by the 17-member Renewal Commission, the plan also calls for a number of other major changes on campus, including revising the co-op program. Co-ops will be clustered in selected host communities, managed by onsite staff or faculty members.

Under the new plan, Antioch will invest $3 million in new technology infrastructure and $50.5 million in campus improvements, including a new student union, residence halls and science building, and renovations of the library, Curl Gym, residence halls and other buildings. Jurasek said that “proposals are being developed” for new construction and infrastructure upgrades, with a “target completion” date of this winter. He said that the new donations are not dedicated to facility upgrades.

Antioch also will create a new Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom, which will include new faculty endowed chairs and an expanded staff and responsibilities for the director of multicultural affairs.

In addition, the renewal plan says that Antioch must increase student enrollment to 900 by 2014.

In its final report, the Renewal Commission placed a total price tag of about $85 million to implement its plan, including all construction proposals.

Last week, Jurasek said that Antioch has designed the process by which it will implement the renewal plan. The process describes how 12 teams of faculty, staff and students will devise specific tasks called for in the renewal plan. The teams include marketing and fundraising; enrollment; budget; physical facilities and technology; faculty personnel policy revision; learning outcomes design; planning for the Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom; hosted learning communities; first-year ELCs; community and campus cultures; e-learning; and course of study.

He described the process as a “breakthrough” in the implementation of the renewal plan.

Filemyr said that 41 of Antioch’s 50 faculty members on campus are “directly involved” in at least one team. Student involvement varies depending on interest level, she said.

Jurasek said the $9 million in donations and the newly created process to implement the plan were “gigantic” steps. “A good portion of the fog on the shape of the future has been dispersed,” he said.