An Interview with President Raymond
September 20, 2006
Kristin Fryer
They are in the dorms, the cafeteria, the classrooms - almost everywhere on campus there are new students and staff, eager to find their niche within the Trinity Western University community. Though you will encounter many unfamiliar faces in these first few weeks, chances are you will recognize that of Dr. Jonathan Raymond who became TWU’s third president this July.
Last week, Raymond opened the doors of his office to speak with Mars’ Hill about the challenges TWU has faced and his plans for renewal in the year to come. While he admitted that last year was “a very difficult year,” he said he felt that “a lot of people are really ready to move forward.”
“I think there may be some people who will have a harder time shifting gears than others,” Raymond added. “There are some people for whom the level of trust of anything administrative is low.”
Even though some doubt or pessimism may remain at TWU, Raymond looks forward to developing new structures in administration and moving TWU in new directions.
The great conversation
By the end of this year, Raymond hopes to have “a very clear new strategic plan that will roll out the plans for the next five to ten years.” In order to involve the TWU community in the development of this plan, Raymond has surveyed campus leadership and faculty, asking them five questions as part of what he calls The Great Conversation.
“The Great Conversation will inform how policy gets interpreted and implemented throughout the university, and will affect the ideas and the rolling out of the strategic plan,” he explained.
To date, Raymond has received 96 responses from staff and faculty, and plans to survey students leaders in the near future.
Later this semester, Raymond will host a Presidents’ forum in conjunction with TWUSA President Norman Van Eeden Petersman, as “part of giving students an ongoing voice.” At the forum, Raymond will ask students questions in order to gain a better understanding of the responses he has received from student leaders.
“We’re trying to open the door to dialogue with the students,” he explained.
By the beginning of next semester, Raymond hopes to have a draft of the strategic plan that faculty, staff and students will have opportunity to respond to.
Creating a framework
To create new structures in administration, a comprehensive policy framework will be established for the Board of Governors.
“The Board will be reframing how they work together as a Board; how they work with the President; how they frame, by policies, the business of the university; and, most importantly, how they frame, in the end, what the university should be achieving in students’ lives,” said Raymond.
To begin the process of developing this framework, Dr. Raymond and the Board’s Governance Committee traveled to Atlanta, Georgia last Thursday, to receive training in policy governance from Carver Policy Governance Inc. As the Carver’s website explains, this model of governance is “designed to empower boards of directors to fulfill their obligation of accountability for the organizations they govern.”
“The Board doesn’t have anything like this [currently],” said Raymond. “This is a major thing for the university, and in time it will transform the culture of the university.”
To create this framework, the Board will state policy in “as broad terms as possible.” The University Policy Council (UPC), a subcommittee of the President’s Cabinet, will then interpret the policy and create a general university policy. Within this general framework, the president, the deans and the department chairs will have the freedom to interpret the policies.
“It shifts from a university that operates on 10 000 approvals, to a pre-approval system,” he said, adding that the change is similar to the difference between tethering a horse to a stake and allowing the horse to roam free in a pasture. “When you have a policy framework, you’re saying ‘You don’t need approval, you just need to operate within the policy.’”
This policy governance system is used by a number of schools belonging to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, including Gordon College, Greenville College, and William and Catherine Booth College, where Raymond served as president for seven years. At Booth College, the process took four years to complete.
Renewing enrolment
Another important change this year came early in Raymond’s presidency. On August 3, Raymond informed campus of his decision to release Jeff Suderman from his role as Vice President for Enrolment Management, noting that the area of enrolment management required a “critical turn around” (see News, p. 3).
“We were heading for a crisis in the sense that we’ve had a significant drop in the American market,” he said. Raymond noted that American students once made up one-third of TWU’s student population; now, they only account for one-fourth.
“People want to immediately associate it with the thing that’s most obvious - the change in the dollar,” said Raymond, “but I think it has to do with acknowledging that Canadian students and families and American students and families are not the same; you really have two different cultures.”
Because of this difference, the university will pursue new marketing strategies to reach American students. However, the results of this turn around may not be evident immediately; Raymond believes the university will not see significant results until next fall.
In addition, TWU has hired Marilyn Crone, an enrolment consultant who has most recently worked with Quest University. Crone will be reframing the work of the entire area of enrolment management, said Raymond, and “revamping it.” He hopes this will renew momentum to grow the university to 5 000 within five to seven years.
“[We’re] operating on a principle that bigger is not always better,” he said, adding that TWU has no plans to become a school of tens of thousands. Most of this growth, said Raymond, will be the result of developing graduate studies, adult degree completion programs, and Global Learning Connections.
As enrollment grows, Raymond hopes to see financial aid grow correspondingly.
“What we plan to do is develop more surpluses that will allow us to give out more financial aid and to continue to maintain and further develop quality,” he explained.
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[…] The net effect of all of this is summed up nicely in the first issue of Mars’ Hill: It shifts from a university that operates on 10 000 approvals, to a pre-approval system,” [Raymond] said, adding that the change is similar to the difference between tethering a horse to a stake and allowing the horse to roam free in a pasture.” […]