Presidents address students in first joint forum
Raymond speaks on tuition hikes, open communication
November 21, 2006
Angela Wiebe
According to Trinity Western University President Jonathan Raymond, students are hard to get a hold of.
“I find it a real challenge to penetrate the busyness of students,” Raymond told close to 40 students last Tuesday night in the Northwest Auditorium. “We’re working at it… [but] I think what happens with students is they get very, very, very busy.”
Raymond addressed students last week as part of the first Presidents’ Forum, designed to offer students a chance to dialogue with both Raymond and TWU’s Student Association President Norman Van Eeden Petersman.
Noting a low return rate from students asked to complete his five-question survey, Raymond said he hopes for increased, ongoing communication with students. Only about 15 per cent of students responded to his survey, compared to nearly 75 per cent of both administration and faculty.
“I see my job as trying to promote and guard the university’s ability to talk to itself,” he said.
Van Eeden Petersman expressed similar sentiments, noting his effort to keep students informed through monthly email newsletters.
“We definitely need to be open,” he said.
Raymond’s desire for increased communication extends beyond just the student body, as the need for outside donations continues to increase, he told students. With both enrolment and TWU’s donor base decreasing, Raymond added that the school is “$2.5 million in the hole for handling finances for next year.”
“We’re trying to woo back major donors,” he said, adding that many donors have moved on to other causes. “The limited number that we have, have been feeling like an ATM over the last couple of years.”
More money coming from outside sources is necessary, Raymond said, as faculty are set to receive a three per cent salary increase after two years of only one per cent increases. Additional funds are also necessary as the university works to keep tuition down.
“We recognize that students do not want tuition to go up,” Raymond said, adding that tuition is a “major theme” in the student feedback he has received.
Raymond wants to work towards an increased scholarship program, based on both merit and financial need. Responding to a question from fourth year student Sven Heyde, Raymond said that he would like to see more opportunities for high-achieving students from lower socioeconomic classes to attend TWU.
Rather than becoming an elite institution because of expense, Raymond hopes “we can be an elite institution in terms of quality of what we do.”
Noting that his work with donors takes up 50 per cent of his workweek, he said a number of plans are in the works to increase the number of donors, such as appealing to American alumni for the first time. While close to one-third of TWU’s 60,000 alumni is American, Raymond said “that’s a totally underdeveloped area.”
He added that administration is also working to gain a more favourable reputation in the media, and with the public in general.
“The Trinity reputation is changing,” he said. “My concern in the long run is that we are transparent…about exactly who we are. There’s a lot of public education we need to do.”
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One Response to “Presidents address students in first joint forum”
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Re: Alumni
A good education doesn’t grow on trees (nor does it grow in every part of the world). Thankfulness as a mark of maturity. Would the alumni consider “tithing” 1% to TWU? As goes TWU, so go its future Grads.