Has it really been 15 years?
Back in the summer of 2004, I accepted a teaching post at a small liberal arts college in southeast Tennessee. It was Hiwassee College. The school had big goals, even if it was struggling amidst the then-recent decision by its regional accrediting body to pull the school's accreditation. I was to be the school's professor of religion (I'd go on to teach the gen ed speech course as well as the freshman seminar for honors students).
The post taught me a lot about teaching and learning. It helped me to develop a theological account of the liberal arts. I gained an appreciation of Hiwassee's heritage in educating those of its region who otherwise wouldn't have been able to gain access into a college education. It truly was a school of "great beginnings".
Recently Hiwassee College leadership made the decision to close the school, after 170 years of its service to Methodist higher education in the area.
There are a number of forces at work in that decision. Hiwassee lost its regional accreditation in 2008. It dropped to 75 or so students for a year. The school never really recovered after that.
Compounded with the problems of deferred maintenance and lower numbers of potential students (there are fewer teenagers in the area, so the ones that are around are more aggressively courted by lots of colleges and universities), Hiwassee never had a real chance of survival after 2008.
That said, in those intervening 15 years, I'm not sure what the administrations and boards of trustees have done to secure its future. Alumni were insulated from the growing problems. The picture was painted in the best possible light for trustees, who were often kept from campus. Faculty and staff were fired (or, more accurately, asked to resign) when they challenged administrations about the looming financial crisis taking its toll on the college. Students were removed from positions of power and influence over the college's decisions that directly impacted their lives.
I tried, while I was there, to help correct some of that. I presented a report, early in my time at Hiwassee, about some of the simple things the college could do. That report was dismissed. In chapel, one year, I preached a sermon to help give a vision for the college. Crickets. I worked tirelessly to craft a way forward for student life and government to be more inclusive and give students a share of the campus power. That government collapsed when I left in 2008. Others worked just as tirelessly -- only to find themselves pushed out of the institution we all loved and believed in.
The demise of Hiwassee College had been written in the sand thirty or forty years prior. Decisions were made by its leadership to turn the college's proverbial back on its heritage, in hopes of competing with other (larger) colleges in the area. Stakeholders became disenfranchised. Alumni started seeing fewer and fewer calls for giving. Faculty and staff worked for months at one point without pay -- often at great cost to their own lives and bank accounts.
The decision to close the college has been called a simple business decision. But to so many folks, it will always be more than that. The decision is confirmation that the administration and trustees repudiated the college's 170 year vision.
I grieve at the loss of the fine institution. But I also recognize that the decision is but the final gasp of a slow and steady decline in health. Hiwassee College died, I fear, at the hands of neglect and incompetence. But it has died nonetheless. And I grieve that death.
But Christians are an Easter people. So who knows what God may have in store ...
Back in the summer of 2004, I accepted a teaching post at a small liberal arts college in southeast Tennessee. It was Hiwassee College. The school had big goals, even if it was struggling amidst the then-recent decision by its regional accrediting body to pull the school's accreditation. I was to be the school's professor of religion (I'd go on to teach the gen ed speech course as well as the freshman seminar for honors students).
The post taught me a lot about teaching and learning. It helped me to develop a theological account of the liberal arts. I gained an appreciation of Hiwassee's heritage in educating those of its region who otherwise wouldn't have been able to gain access into a college education. It truly was a school of "great beginnings".
Recently Hiwassee College leadership made the decision to close the school, after 170 years of its service to Methodist higher education in the area.
There are a number of forces at work in that decision. Hiwassee lost its regional accreditation in 2008. It dropped to 75 or so students for a year. The school never really recovered after that.
Compounded with the problems of deferred maintenance and lower numbers of potential students (there are fewer teenagers in the area, so the ones that are around are more aggressively courted by lots of colleges and universities), Hiwassee never had a real chance of survival after 2008.
That said, in those intervening 15 years, I'm not sure what the administrations and boards of trustees have done to secure its future. Alumni were insulated from the growing problems. The picture was painted in the best possible light for trustees, who were often kept from campus. Faculty and staff were fired (or, more accurately, asked to resign) when they challenged administrations about the looming financial crisis taking its toll on the college. Students were removed from positions of power and influence over the college's decisions that directly impacted their lives.
I tried, while I was there, to help correct some of that. I presented a report, early in my time at Hiwassee, about some of the simple things the college could do. That report was dismissed. In chapel, one year, I preached a sermon to help give a vision for the college. Crickets. I worked tirelessly to craft a way forward for student life and government to be more inclusive and give students a share of the campus power. That government collapsed when I left in 2008. Others worked just as tirelessly -- only to find themselves pushed out of the institution we all loved and believed in.
The demise of Hiwassee College had been written in the sand thirty or forty years prior. Decisions were made by its leadership to turn the college's proverbial back on its heritage, in hopes of competing with other (larger) colleges in the area. Stakeholders became disenfranchised. Alumni started seeing fewer and fewer calls for giving. Faculty and staff worked for months at one point without pay -- often at great cost to their own lives and bank accounts.
The decision to close the college has been called a simple business decision. But to so many folks, it will always be more than that. The decision is confirmation that the administration and trustees repudiated the college's 170 year vision.
I grieve at the loss of the fine institution. But I also recognize that the decision is but the final gasp of a slow and steady decline in health. Hiwassee College died, I fear, at the hands of neglect and incompetence. But it has died nonetheless. And I grieve that death.
But Christians are an Easter people. So who knows what God may have in store ...