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ALUMNI CORNER
Challenges on the Horizon
By Brian C. Krisberg ’81
President, Columbia College Alumni Association
ne of the most interesting people I have ever met is former College Dean Peter Pouncey ’69 GSAS. Simply having lunch with Peter was in and of itself an education and a chance to learn from a tremendous intellect. Peter, who served as dean from 1972–76, is credited with beginning the turnaround that has taken the College from the struggles of the early 1970s to the rarefied air it occupies today.
Peter emphasized the need to improve all aspects of the quality of life for College undergrads, from the food to the dormitories to health services. Peter departed Columbia in 1984 to become the president of a small college we all know of in Massachusetts (Amherst). But he continues to show his loyalty to Columbia to this day, teaching in the Core Curriculum this year.
For a few years in the early 1990s, I tagged along to an end-of-year lunch tradition that Peter had with professor and former associate dean Michael Rosenthal and former Alumni Association president Charles J. O’Byrne ’81. Rosenthal and O’Byrne, together with Peter’s successor, former College dean Arnold Collery (now deceased), and former dean of students Roger Lehecka ’67, were intimately involved in the successful implementation of coeducation at the College in the mid-1980s. Each of them, like Peter, deserves credit for their years of service to our school.
Peter liked to tell stories about his experiences being the president of Amherst. To this day, I have vivid memories of listening to Peter talk about what it was like to go to meetings of its faculty and alumni. He said they liked to sit around and discuss how “great” they are at everything, in contrast to the political battles of that era he left behind at Columbia.
I bring that up because I see some of the same risk of complacency that Peter poked fun at seeping into today’s Columbia landscape, as we marvel at the College’s popularity (more than 18,000 applications for the Class of 2011). The pursuit of excellence, rather than complacency, is the only way Columbia will remain competitive with its Ivy peers.
That pursuit is occurring in fundraising. From time to time I attend, in my capacity as president of the CCAA, some interesting functions where information is disseminated. In mid-December, I sat in on a status and update breakfast for the $4 billion Columbia Campaign. The statistics are awesome. Nearly $2.5 billion has been committed less than halfway into the campaign period, including more than 50 percent of the Arts and Sciences’ $1 billion goal. Some $424 million was raised in Fiscal Year 2006–07, placing the University third in the so-called Ivy Plus Group and marking Columbia’s best single-year performance. One could not help but come away from the presentation impressed. As a College alumnus, I walked to work feeling proud to be associated with this fine endeavor being led in dedicated fashion by University Trustees Chair Bill Campbell ’62, Trustees Vice-chair Phil Milstein ’71 and Trustees Mark Kingdon ’71 and Richard Witten ’75, and of course, President Lee C. Bollinger.
I contrast how I felt that cold December morning with how I felt one mid-November morning as I perused my Columbia Daily Spectator e-mail (by the way, if you don’t already get Spec sent to you each day, you really should). The headline read, “University May Merge GS with CC: After Years of Discussion, Integration Appears Likely.” The long article that followed attempted to discuss not so much a merger as a closer administrative relationship between the College and the School of General Studies that might benefit GS, including admissions, financial aid, housing and student life. Analogies were drawn to the successful integration of the College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science in the late 1990s through the creation of a joint Office of Student Affairs led by Chris Colombo.
Most important, what the article did not discuss was whether an integration of the College and GS would benefit Columbia College in any tangible way. As a devoted College alumnus, that is certainly my primary concern. The establishment of a formal relationship between the College and GS in a manner that benefits the College is one of the most important, if not the most important, challenges on the horizon today for the College administration. Such a relationship, which makes GS feel more a part of the undergraduate landscape and cements the College’s role as the central and flagship undergraduate division at Columbia, can ultimately make the University as a whole a better place. How this is handled will affect the College as we know it for years to come. And I know that Dean Austin Quigley is well aware of the challenges as well as the opportunities the College would confront were we to go down this path, and he stresses that task force discussions of such a move are only at an exploratory stage.
I take it as a given, considering the College’s ever-growing applicant pool, that at some point in the upcoming years, pressure will emerge to increase the size of the College (if you’re interested in contributing funds to have the next dorm named after you, please call Dean Quigley now). This growth from the present 4,200 should not be done in a manner that dilutes the University’s commitment to teaching the Core Curriculum to College students in small, seminar-size classes; to offering competitive financial aid; to providing a constantly improving quality of life in residence halls, dining and student services; to finding and recruiting the best faculty that really teach our undergraduates; to offering interesting programs to our alumni that foster development and loyalty; and to finding new and better ways to generate spirit and enthusiasm in the College community.
Administrative logic and cost efficiency arguments may exist for some type of more formal arrangement of the College’s and GS’ operations. The College has come incredibly far in the last three decades, transforming itself into one of the preeminent colleges in the land. Whether this momentum would be furthered through some sort of closer administrative relationship with the distinctly different GS community is a significant question that merits scrutiny and open discussion with College students, faculty and alumni.
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