To the Board of Trustees, Alumnae, Faculty, and Friends of Wellesley College

It is my privilege to submit the 2003–2004 annual financial report of Wellesley College and, with it, the news that our College continues to thrive, thanks to the dedication of its many wise and vigilant stewards. The familiar rhythms of college life produce predictable patterns from one year to the next, and yet each year develops a character all its own. This past year was one of transitions in the leadership ranks, and, perhaps because of the changes, a year in which we revisited and reinforced some of our deepest values.

In the letters that follow, Andrew B. Evans, our new vice president for finance and treasurer, and Jane L. Mendillo, our chief investment officer, report, respectively, on the College’s financial position and endowment performance. Below, I offer a perspective on another year of meaningful learning, greatly enhanced by the special initiatives made possible through generous gifts to The Wellesley Campaign.

Academic Excellence

In their final year as dean and associate deans of the college, Lee Cuba, Andrea Levitt, and Andrew Shennan continued to lead the faculty in a searching exploration of questions about “academic excellence” formulated with the trustees at a two-day retreat with academic department and program chairs in October 2002. The faculty made significant headway this year addressing issues related to grade inflation, the honor code, and global education. As they did so, they were also advancing a longer-term aspiration identified at the retreat: a desire to strengthen the empirical foundation on which we ask questions about our quality and make choices about our future. The deans described these efforts in a thoughtful five-year re-accreditation report, submitted in January to the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

To identify curricular strengths as well as gaps in the academic experience, the Committee on Academic Excellence, chaired by Dean Cuba, solicited self-assessments from academic departments and programs, reviewed extensive data from regular surveys of students and alumnae, conducted consultations with the faculty, and met throughout the year to develop specific recommendations aimed at assuring, to the full extent possible, the quality of the academic experience for every Wellesley student. By year’s end, the committee had produced a far-reaching and candid report identifying opportunities for improvements in a number of areas, including: requirements for the major; advanced placement credits; instruction in public speaking; opportunities for collaborative learning; special programs for first-year students; academic advising; and institutional self-assessment.

Meanwhile, the Committee on Curriculum and Instruction (CCI), chaired by associate dean Andrew Shennan, catalyzed a year-long discussion of the problem of grade inflation and, in April, brought a successful resolution to the Academic Council committing the faculty to a new, college-wide grading standard designed to reverse an inflationary trend in average grades that has been a matter of concern for several years, and to diminish the grading discrepancies across departments and divisions.

Another hard-working committee, this one charged to review the status of the Wellesley College honor code, spent its first year assessing and recommending improvements to our adjudicatory procedures. The committee consulted widely with students, faculty, staff, trustees, and alumnae to identify practices and procedures needing change, and reviewed standards of practice in disciplinary proceedings at peer institutions. They presented preliminary findings in a series of public meetings during the spring semester, and, in June, submitted a report to me recommending substantial improvements to the general judiciary system. We envisage further work on the honor code in the year ahead, both to implement the recommendations from this year’s report and to develop a robust program that will continuously reinforce intellectual integrity as one of the most fundamental values that defines an academic community.

Among significant enhancements this year to the global education initiative that has been a centerpiece of The Wellesley Campaign, the dean’s office: restructured the international relations major; reconstituted the departments of Chinese and Japanese, and added Korean language, to create a new department of East Asian Languages and Literatures; designed a new financing plan for study abroad; and established a new position of administrative director of international study. In addition, the extraordinary program being sponsored by Shelby M.C. Davis has greatly expanded the international profile and consciousness of the Wellesley student body. This year we had 52 exceptional and enthusiastic graduates of the nine United World College campuses around the globe enrolled for four years at Wellesley as Davis-UWC Scholars.

There was good news in the sciences, too. In May, we were excited to learn that our proposal to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) was selected for a $1.2 million four-year competitive grant. These all-important funds for the natural sciences will support summer research collaborations between students and faculty, post-doctoral fellowships in scientific fields that cross disciplinary lines, curriculum development, and new instrumentation for the science center. The support we have been fortunate to enjoy from HHMI (this is our fifth major award) has been a critical factor in our ability to recruit and retain exceptionally talented teacher-scholars in the sciences who provide our students the personalized hands-on research mentoring that would be reserved for graduate students in a research university.

The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities was launched this year by a planning committee, chaired by associate dean, Andrea Levitt, responding to my request for a mission statement and a vision for the new center, and for recommendations for its administrative structure and eventual location in Green Hall. We appointed Timothy Peltason, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English, the first director of the center, which intends to “promote innovative, imaginative, and influential research and teaching in the humanities, broadly defined,” to bring “the best current research to bear upon new and enduring issues in the humanities,” to “create a dynamic and cosmopolitan intellectual community that extends from Wellesley College to the wider Boston-area community and beyond,” and to create “opportunities for intellectual risk taking and the exchange of ideas among faculty and students.”

Year Four of The Wellesley Campaign

On June 30, 2004 we closed the penultimate year of The Wellesley Campaign with gifts and pledges totaling $373.6 million, over 90% of our dollar goal with 12 months still to go. What a wonderful position in which to be. With several programmatic needs still only partially funded, the campaign continues to generate high levels of excitement. Donors made 15 new gifts and pledges of seven figures or more in fiscal ’04. Total giving to the College in FY 04 was $54.7 million. For the final year, we are hoping to secure additional support for major capital projects, particularly the Alumnae Valley restoration, named spaces within the Wang Campus Center, and the chapel project, as well as support for financial aid, global education, and library acquisitions.

Already nearly 23,000 individuals have made gifts to this campaign. That comes to roughly 10 donors per student, a lovely image that captures the potency of the Wellesley network: 10 of us standing behind each and every student, cheering her on. Almost 70% of Wellesley alumnae have participated in the campaign so far, a remarkable participation rate I hope we will raise even higher in the final year. It is an inspiring story of generosity and faithful stewardship.

An explicit goal of the campaign has been to strengthen our Annual Giving program, on which we depend for unrestricted and current-use gifts that help us balance our budget every year. Annual giving this year totaled $10.6 million, an increase of 8% over last year and another all-time record for unrestricted gifts combined with current-use financial aid gifts. The Shelby Davis-United World College fund was again a major factor, providing more than $1.7 million in current-use financial aid in FY04 for the 52 Davis-UWC scholars. This year’s reunion classes set many records, including new College records for dollars raised by the Classes of ’49, ’54, ’64 and ’79 and a new record by the Class of 2004, for their senior class gift of $15,908. Alumnae participation in giving was a solid 53%.

We hosted five more campaign celebrations through the year, bringing the total to 16. These gala events have drawn capacity crowds of alumnae and friends of all ages. In September a celebration in London at the British Museum enabled us to connect with alumnae from the UK and the European continent. Because that trip corresponded with the Wellesley College Alumnae Association’s third annual Day to Make a Difference, a group of us began the day by running a 10K road race through Hyde Park to raise money for cancer research. Later in the fall we held campaign celebrations in Minneapolis, Denver, and Phoenix and, in the spring, one in Philadelphia.

In October, near the site of the new Wang Campus Center and Davis Parking Facility, the trustees held a “beam signing” ceremony with Lulu and Tony Wang and Kathryn Davis and her family to commemorate their extraordinary gifts that have made those two projects possible. In January, we rededicated the Margaret Clapp Library as the capstone of a gradual process of renovating the building over a period of years, beginning in 1995. Working from a large vision and a master plan, we took up the project in segments as we were able to assemble the resources, and were glad for the opportunity to thank the major donors.

The opening of the Davis Parking Facility in February was an historic event, accompanied by a new campus-wide parking plan which entailed reassigning over 600 parking permits. In accordance with the campus master plan, we have now removed parking along roadways throughout the core of the campus: up and down Jewett and Pendleton hills, in front of Houghton Memorial Chapel, behind Margaret Clapp Library, down Tupelo Road and in the temporary parking lots that are being restored as meadows. Pedestrians have regained the primacy they enjoyed decades ago, and can now enjoy views of the campus unmediated by chrome, glass, and metal. The difference is quite striking.

And that very practical change is but one of the ways in which the campaign has already transformed the Wellesley educational experience and the campus in which that experience is so deeply rooted. The program of innovation and revitalization enabled by the campaign has created a wealth of new opportunities for our students and has unleashed a spirit of creative initiative across the College. New directions bring new budgetary challenges, inevitably, and, as you will note in Andy Evans’s financial report, we have begun asking ourselves, for the long-term future, what we need to do to maintain our competitive position and support our commitments while also freeing up funds to afford new initiatives. We approach the question of financial equilibrium from a position of significant strength.

Leadership Transitions

Every year in academia is a year of transitions, as our rituals constantly remind us, but the theme of transitions was especially salient this year. Fortunately, the senior staff was strong and seasoned; several members of the team took on special assignments to carry us through a challenging time.

The fall semester began, in effect, with a handoff of the incoming first-year class from our director of admissions, Jennifer Desjarlais (who had taken up her interim responsibilities heading the admissions office only in June) to our dean of students, Kimberly Goff-Crews (who had just arrived on August 1). Both of these impressive women quickly hit their stride.

As we opened college, I was particularly pleased that we had persuaded the various cultural groups to begin orientation with the whole first-year class together, rather than in the preorientation programs that for many years had separated students into racial and ethnic groups as they first arrived. Michelle Lepore, the associate dean of students (who had served for one year as interim dean), led the residential life staff and the cultural advisors in coaching the student leaders to design a successful program of diversity education for everyone. This was a big step forward for us, and was testimony to progress in the student life division and a new spirit of collaboration among student leaders.

We started the year, as well, preparing for a complete turnover in the office of the dean of the college. I spent much of my time in the fall semester consulting members of the faculty for their views on the opportunities ahead, the qualities of leadership that would best serve our needs, and potential candidates for the deanship. In February, I announced the appointment of Professor Andrew Shennan as Dean of the College for an initial three-year term beginning July 1, 2004. In his capacity as associate dean for the previous five years, Andy had emerged as a trusted and thoughtful leader of the faculty who assembles and assesses evidence to inform complex decisions and persuades through the force of argument. He holds himself to the highest standards of integrity and intellectual rigor, and expects no less of others. At the same time, he is a good listener and is open and sensitive to the varied concerns of faculty, students, staff, and alumnae of the college. In the spring semester, Dean Shennan and I selected two distinguished scientists as the two new associate deans: Joanne Berger-Sweeney, Allene Lummis Russell ’46 Professor in Neuroscience, and Adele Wolfson, professor of chemistry.

In September, too, we began a national search for a dean of admission, with Jennifer Desjarlais as a strong internal candidate. Dean Rapelye had recruited Jenn to Wellesley as senior associate director of admission in January 1999 and, in July 2001, promoted her to director of admission, with management responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the division. As its interim leader for the six months of the search, Jenn earned the respect of trustees, faculty, members of the administration, and her own staff. She demonstrated her ability to take on a larger leadership role, within the College and in the wider educational community, and the search produced plentiful evidence of the high regard in which she is held by professional colleagues across the country.

Under Dean Desjarlais, we logged another record-breaking admissions year for the College. The number of applications for the Class of 2008 increased a full 17% over last year’s record increase of 20%. This was the most selective the Board of Admission has been in more than 30 years; they admitted 36% of applicants. Among the factors that likely increased our profile with high school graduates were the attention focused on Wellesley by the release of best-selling memoirs by Hillary Rodham Clinton ’69 and Madeleine Korbel Albright ’59, both of whom reflected warmly on their Wellesley years. In addition, the magazine U.S. News and World Report ran a special feature in their college edition on women’s colleges and, specifically, Wellesley. Also, the major motion picture, Mona Lisa Smile, was controversial with many alumnae and provoked numerous discussions of Wellesley in the public media. Younger viewers were less troubled by the historical inaccuracies in the film than were alumnae whose experiences it purported to depict; some applicants said the film attracted them to Wellesley.

By far the most wrenching transition this past year was in the finance division. Over the summer it became increasingly clear that Susan Vogt, vice president for finance and treasurer, was seriously ill and although her team worked day and night to hold her job open for her recovery, I came to the reluctant conclusion in early September, with Susan’s assent, that we needed to find someone who could cover her role for an indefinite period. We were extremely fortunate to secure the services of Raymond J. Clark, treasurer emeritus of Princeton University, as interim vice president of finance and treasurer. He was willing to stay as long as we needed his help.

Susan died in October, just three years after joining the Wellesley administration. She left a strong and enduring legacy, together with many admirers and friends. Early in her tenure at Wellesley, she had recruited an excellent professional, Donna Ng, as a new controller, and they had been working together to augment and streamline our systems and controls and to institute a process of continuous improvement in the controller’s office. As is so often the case in such a transformation, the work uncovered more work and we were especially grateful for Ray Clark’s steady presence through the year, as we continued to modernize that vital function and to search for a new vice president.

In February, I asked Patricia Byrne, vice president of administration and planning, to chair a committee that would conduct a national search for a vice president for finance and treasurer and would recommend to me a group of qualified finalists from which to make my selection. On June 1, I announced the appointment of Andrew B. Evans, who had been serving as vice president for finance and administration at Oberlin College since 1995 and, before that, had for 10 years been associate dean for management, finance, and development at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Andy Evans emerged from our search as a person of integrity and character who listens and communicates exceedingly well with everyone and has a strong understanding of the academic mission.

Other Important Arrivals and Departures

This year we welcomed seven new tenure-track professors, one each in chemistry, classical studies, English, political science, psychology, sociology and women’s studies. We bade farewell to four departing members of the faculty who have served the College with distinction: Richard Wallace, Professor of Art, after 40 years of service, Linda B. Miller, Professor of Political Science, who served for 35 years, James O’Gorman, Grace Slack McNeil Professor of the History of American Art, 29 years, and Barbara Brenzel, Professor of Education, 26 years.

Five members of the Board of Trustees completed their service. Marissa Van Saanen ’01 served from 2001 to 2004 as young alumna trustee commuting from Oxford University in England for board meetings. Lynn B. Sherr ’63 served with great verve and energy as an alumna trustee from 1998 until 2004. Theresa Mall Mullarkey ’60 served for 16 years, 1988-2004, connecting the world of New York to the College and encouraging alumnae from around the country to do their part in assuring Wellesley’s future. Gail Heitler Klapper ’65 provided powerful leadership as chair of the board from 1993 to 1999, and, from 1986 to 2004, as a highly-respected member of the board. Edward Lawrence served as a wise and trusted counselor and friend for 18 years, beginning in 1986; from 1995 to 2004 he was vice chair of the board. At its final meeting in May, the board elected Tess Mullarkey, Gail Klapper and Ed Lawrence trustees emeritae/i.

Four new members joined the Board of Trustees: James Kloppenberg, Faculty Trustee, Ellen Goldberg Luger ’83, President of the Alumnae Association, Norton Reamer, and Patricia J. Williams ’73.

Other Noteworthy News

Wellesley did very well again in the competition for prestigious national fellowships. Our record of success over the past decade has equaled and in many cases exceeded those of large, elite universities. The Class of 2004 matched last year’s remarkable record of 14 Fulbright Scholarships. They won a Rhodes Scholarship and, for the third year in a row, two Watson Fellowships. We had three recipients of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship and one recipient each of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, the Beineke Scholarship and the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

In October, we hosted the annual Seven College (formerly the “seven sisters”) Conference. This year’s topic, viewpoint diversity on campus, stimulated a lively discussion. Later that month we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center. Through the year, as always, we hosted many interesting speakers: award-winning author and performer Anna Deveare Smith; television journalist Bill Moyers; two-time Olympic gold medalist and Emmy Award-winning broadcaster Donna de Varona; Douglas S. Massey, Princeton professor of sociology; Debra Knopman ’75, associate director of RAND Science and Technology. Wellesley’s annual distinguished faculty lecture, held during Parent/Family Weekend, was “What We Can Learn from Myth,” by Mary Lefkowitz, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humani¬ties and Professor of Classical Studies. Toni Morrison was a memorable commencement speaker for the Class of 2004.

Bracketed by the heartache of sudden and untimely death – of our chief financial officer in October and a first-year student in April – this was a year that sounded every note on the emotional register, a year of sorrow and struggle, of pleasure and joy, of transition and transformation. I end it with profound appreciation for the constancy of my colleagues: the vice presidents and the deans and the people who work for and with them, the trustees and the faculty, all the good and caring people who give so much of themselves to the possibility of a liberal education that truly awakens minds and the promise that our graduates will continue to do their part to create a better future on this increasingly fragile earth. I thank you for your support.

Yours very truly,

Diana Chapman Walsh
President