State of the College
President H. Kim Bottomly
To the Alumnae Community
June 18, 2009

After the severe financial challenges of the past year, and as I celebrate this June's happy reunion of Wellesley women returning to campus to share their stories, I want to give you a sense of the College's position as the 2008-2009 academic year draws to a close.

The state of the College is strong and resilient.

I am deeply grateful to all who have worked so tirelessly across campus to address the unprecedented economic challenges that we — and virtually everyone and every institution — confronted this year. When the decline in the value of Wellesley's endowment — a 20 to 25 percent decrease this year — was projected to result in a $20 million deficit in the following academic year's operating budget, the Wellesley community stepped up to meet the challenge. Not only were the senior staff and I able to develop a reduced 2009-2010 budget that received the Board of Trustees' approval at their April 24 meeting, but we have already made significant strides towards managing the 2010-2011 deficit.

When the magnitude of the looming deficit became clear this past December, I asked each College constituency to share in immediate budget reductions. The savings realized from these early cuts gave us the one-time expenditures we needed to fund more strategic reductions in the spring, which will result in significantly greater savings in the future. We implemented reductions in staff, operating budgets, and discretionary spending, and imposed a salary freeze for all faculty and staff effective July 1. Additional budget cuts also will be needed in the years to come. To adjust to the new economic realities, the senior staff and I continue to refine long-term strategies, including a reorganization of the administrative work of the College. This work of reorganization will be ongoing as we streamline our operations to become more efficient, and also realign functional areas within and across divisions.

While all measures taken have been thoughtful and sensitive, their implementation often has been painful. The community at large has come together to support these changes — not always in agreement on any given change, but confident that considered as a whole, the steps we are taking to address the problem will prove successful. We will need to remain vigilant and flexible, of course. But when conditions improve — as they must — I am convinced that our early actions will not only allow us to recover more quickly, but will better position us to meet future challenges.

Our guiding principles in managing the budget are to preserve our core academic enterprise — that which makes us one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the world — and to maintain our unwavering commitment to affordability through Wellesley's generous financial aid program. It is a significant achievement that we stayed true to these objectives while significantly reducing next year's budget.

In fact, although we reduced many budget line items, we actually increased the amount devoted to financial aid next year, ensuring our ability to work with each family during these uncertain economic times to guarantee that every student who is admitted to Wellesley can attend. The College does not consider a family's ability to pay when it makes its admissions decisions, and once these decisions are made, we remain steadfast in our commitment to meet 100 percent of the financial need of every student eligible for our financial aid program.

We view financial aid as an essential investment — one that ensures our ability to attract bright, talented young women from a wide range of experiences and socioeconomic backgrounds in order to deepen and enrich our academic community. Our determination to protect financial aid funding seems to be bearing fruit: Wellesley is one of only a handful of top liberal arts colleges that had an increase in applications this year. I am also happy to report that not only does our yield remain very strong, but the strength and quality of the enrolling student group are truly impressive: these young women represent a breadth of backgrounds and perspectives that spans 45 nations of citizenship.

Planning for the future is essential during challenging times — and our plans are driven by the goal of managing our resources strategically and in support of our institutional priorities. So while we've naturally and necessarily thought about what we can do without, we have also given considerable thought to what we cannot do without, what we must have to further Wellesley's mission and emerge stronger than ever.

To help ensure our premier position for the years to come, we are firmly focused on our top priorities — educating our students and nurturing the Wellesley intellectual community. I am pleased to report that we have been able to recruit and hire 14 remarkable new faculty members this year. These appointments represent a forward-looking investment in outstanding professors who will supplement the intellectual diversity of our faculty and bring us new areas of specialization — all while preserving our impressive 9:1 student to faculty ratio and the close interaction between students and faculty.

Our newest members join the rest of our faculty who, as a group, are the foundation of Wellesley College and the ultimate source of our academic standing. I am pleased to note that not only has the number of faculty applications for federal grants and numerous individual fellowships significantly increased over the course of this year, but with 26 grants awarded to date, we are well on track to exceed last year's results. Among the awardees are: Richard French (Astronomy), who received a grant from NASA; Alice Friedman (Art History), who was awarded a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society; Lisa Rodensky (English), who received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; and Filomina Steady (Africana Studies), who was awarded a grant from the Ford Foundation — our faculty community of recognized scholars continues to enrich the College with a vast range of academic research projects and scholarly pursuits.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW). I applaud the Centers' track record of research and action projects that have informed public policy, shaped public opinion, and improved the lives of women and families for over three decades. No other women's research-and-action organization can match WCW's depth of experience, consistency of focus, and history of positive change. We are all fortunate to have the Centers' search for solutions continue full speed into the future.

Wellesley students also did an exceptional job in representing themselves and the College in this year's competition for fellowships and scholarships, winning one Carnegie Junior Fellowship, one Udall, two National Science Foundations, two Trumans, nine Fulbright awards, a Watson, as well as a host of other awards. Wellesley senior Maya Smith, for example, is one of 30 young leaders from around the world chosen to help fight malaria with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

But the competition didn't just happen in the classroom. Every one of Wellesley's 13 varsity teams qualified for post-season NEWMAC conference play and tennis repeated as NEWMAC champions. Three teams qualified for the NCAA tournament — fencing, tennis, and volleyball, with volleyball advancing to the Sweet Sixteen. And we all cheered when Kate "Sprout" Sorenson '09, who took up diving in her sophomore year, captured the title "NEWMAC Diver of the Year" and ended the season as an NCAA All-American.

As the robust and dynamic intellectual life of students and faculty here at Wellesley continues to flourish, the College has made several long-reaching strategic decisions to enhance our intellectual environment.

We will proudly unveil the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs (the Albright Institute) this coming academic year. The Albright Institute will be a place where scholars and practitioners can gather to research, to reflect on, and to discuss and debate global issues. It will be a place that brings a focused international perspective to our liberal arts curriculum. It will be a place that will play a critical role in Wellesley's education of future women leaders across the world.

By integrating the academic resources of the College and the research capabilities of the WCW with the insight of thought leaders in global affairs from around the world, I expect the Albright Institute will make a profound contribution to the academic community of Wellesley and to the community of Wellesley-educated women leaders throughout the world. I encourage you to visit the Institute's recently launched Web site to see the positive coverage we've already received from the press: http://www.wellesley.edu/albright.

We have reaffirmed our commitment to excellence in the arts through our search for the new director of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center — the only administrative search that we approved this year. Wellesley has been collecting and exhibiting visual art since 1889 — making the College one of the first liberal arts institutions to establish a teaching collection. Since then, our arts curriculum and our museum have grown to become crucial and irreplaceable components of the outstanding liberal arts education we offer. As I noted earlier this year, "It is not an accident that the arts outlive the civilizations that produce them...They live and inform forever...Art is simultaneously intellectual and emotional, and there is no more powerful way to teach critical thinking, to inspire students, and to make knowledge personal, patterned, and permanent."

The new director will shape the museum's goals and priorities as well as play a key role in enhancing the vibrancy and creativity of Wellesley's intellectual community. We invite you to submit, in confidence, the names and particulars of any promising candidates you may know. Russell Reynolds Associates, the executive search firm that we have engaged to assist us with the search, has provided a dedicated address: wellesdavisdir@russellreynolds.com.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that we have formalized a cooperative link with Olin College, one of the country's leading engineering colleges, and Babson College, a top-ranked college for the study of entrepreneurship, to strengthen academic and social relationships — even as we maintain our important cross-registration with MIT. The colleges seek to build on geographic proximity and complementary curricula to explore the synergies inherent in our three missions. We expect to realize some budgetary benefits from this cooperation, but there is a larger opportunity to innovate a new model for higher education that puts some muscle behind a truly interdisciplinary approach to generating new knowledge.

Through thoughtful transitional measures and wise long-term planning, we will adjust to the new economic realities and continue to provide an unparalleled education for our students and an outstanding intellectual environment for our community. We take immense pride in the goodwill and resolve of our community of students, faculty, staff, alumnae, parents, friends, and partners. Despite obviously difficult economic times, our commitment to the Wellesley mission is unwavering and the intellectual vitality of the College continues at full strength. In the years to come, I am confident that Wellesley will more than thrive — it will soar.