Office of the President

Update to the Seminary Community: 23 October 2010

The seminary’s Board of Trustees met on the seminary’s campus on Monday and Tuesday 18 and 19 October 2010.

The board heard regular reports from its committees on Academic Affairs, Audit, Facilities, Financial Affairs, Investment, Seminary Relations, Student Life, and on Trustees. These committees report to every meeting of the board. The board also heard from its Executive Committee and its Library Committee. The Bicentennial Committee and the Library Committee are two ad hoc committees, and the Bicentennial Committee did not meet on this occasion.

At the board meeting on Tuesday 19 October, five new trustees were installed. These were the Reverend Darrell L. Armstrong, Class of 1999, who is pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey; Mr. Paul A. Branstad, who is president and CEO of Safeharbor Advisors in Chicago, Illinois, and a member and trustee of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago; the Reverend Dr. Sang Chang, Class of 1977, who is president emerita of Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, and the first woman appointed prime minister-designate of South Korea; the Reverend Ruth Santana-Grace, Class of 1994, who is executive presbyter of San Gabriel Presbytery in Azusa, California; and the Reverend Dr. Richard Kannwischer, Class of 1998, who is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California, and was elected by his fellow alumni/ae as an alumni/ae trustee in the Class of 2013. He earned a D.Min. from Fuller Theological Seminary. Neither the Reverend Darrell Armstrong nor Dr. Sang Chang are members of the Presbyterian Church (USA), so their appointment marks an historic step for the seminary.

The Board elected a new trustee, Mr. Scott D Renninger of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, who is treasurer and chief financial officer of Affiliated Distributors, Inc, King of Prussia. Mr. Renninger will be installed next October, but we hope he will be able to attend meetings of the board before then.

An innovation during this meeting of the board was having a faculty presence at some committee meetings. The board’s Committee on Trustees has assigned Dr. Ellen Charry to be present at the Committee on Student Life; Dr. Leong Seow to be present at the Financial Affairs Committee; Dr. Kenda Dean to be present at the Seminary Relations Committee; and Dr. Nancy Duff to be present at the Academic Affairs Committee. Each faculty member has been assigned a board member as mentor to provide welcome and context. All of the faculty members have had an orientation session with the board chair, the chair of the Committee on Trustees and with me. Trustees acting as mentors are as follows: Dr. Ginny Thornburgh (for Dr. Charry); Dr. Francisco Garcia-Treto (for Dr. Duff); Mr. John Donelik

[UPDATE TO THE SEMINARY COMMUNITY] October 23, 2010

(for Dr. Seow); and Dr. John Galloway (for Dr. Dean). Faculty people who are present at committees have signed vows expressing their Christian belief, modeled on those signed by trustees and the vows they themselves signed when they became tenured members of the faculty. They have also signed an adapted form of the “Trustee Covenant”, in which they promise to recognize the authority of the board as a whole, and not individually to presume its will nor to speak unofficially on its behalf, not to promote any self-interest, not to use their presence to further any business or professional interest or presume any entitlement, and to preserve confidentialities and maintain respect for the proper boundaries between trustees, faculty, staff and students. Further, they promise to support and advance the work of the seminary, making the seminary a priority in their own giving, and they promise to be adequately prepared and to pray regularly for the seminary community, its president, their faculty colleagues, students and members of the board. This document, with minor changes, as it is worded for trustees rather than faculty persons, is signed by all trustees and together with the vows, provides an important part of our cohesion, common responsibility and commitment.

The aim of the innovation of having faculty present is to demystify the relation between the board and the faculty, to show the level of commitment and common responsibility which is a part of the ethos of the board, and to offer a share in that, while being in a different capacity. Our hope is that greater participation within a framework of commitment will be in service to the overall mission of the school and be understood as an instrument of communication as well as a further exercise in shared governance. The process is monitored and is intended to provide opportunity for a faculty input into key committees and for a direct board comment to the faculty. Some committee material is confidential and rightly so. Other material may and should be shared appropriately. From reports I have received, so far this has been a successful experiment. Faculty people who were present made contributions and heard comment. This is what had been hoped. Dr. Ellen Charry, due to a longstanding prior commitment, was unable to take part on this occasion.

Members of the board and many others took part in a ceremony to lay the cornerstone of one of the new buildings at the Charlotte Rachel Wilson campus. The accommodation complex was named by Mrs. Charlotte Rachel Wilson Newcombe in honor of her mother, Mrs. Charlotte Rachel Wilson. The promise of Mrs. Newcombe’s gift is what emboldened President McCord to purchase the property on 16 June 1965 at a sheriff’s sale for a price of $2,581,000. This property, originally known as the “Princeton- Windsor apartment complex” was renamed the Charlotte Rachel Wilson Apartments in 1979 through the generous gift of Mrs. Newcombe, whose legacy not only lifted the mortgage from the property but also endowed two chairs.

Members of the board also participated in a ceremony to mark the closing of the Speer Library. Faculty were invited, as well as library staff, the neighbors who had supported us through the planning process, members of our legal team, our master planner (Dr. Ira Fink), and representatives from the construction team. In a speech to mark the occasion, I particularly thanked the library staff who had worked so hard and successfully during the summer to empty Speer Library and rearrange the Henry Luce III Library so that it can operate as the seminary’s sole library during the construction phase. The Henry Luce III Library now contains about 80% of the contents of Speer and is functioning tremendously well.

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[UPDATE TO THE SEMINARY COMMUNITY] October 23, 2010

Educational Media videoed both events and the videos will soon be available. The Board asked for a transcript of the speeches to be preserved in the seminary’s records.

The board was informed that the seminary operated within its budget constraints for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010. The board’s auditors (the audit firm of O’Connor Davies Munns & Dobbins [ODMD]) submitted a report including an unqualified (or “clean”) opinion on the seminary’s financial statements for the year, noting no corrections in the seminary’s submissions. I might say that this is no mean achievement.

Our auditors do not look only at our accounts, but also review risks affecting the seminary and had earlier recommended that the seminary establish a code of conduct. Those who will serve on the working group to produce that code have almost been assembled and their names will soon be announced.

I reported the recent and successful follow-up visit from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), noting that their draft report is available on the seminary’s intranet through the portal. I noted that MSCHE had given us five (5) days within which to submit our institutional response, and that I had duly filed this on Wednesday 20 October.

At the board meeting itself there was a memorial minute for the late Reverend Dr. Samuel G. Warr of Lakeland, Florida. Sam Warr, among very many other contributions to the seminary, was the person who came up with the idea of having a seminary mace for ceremonial occasions, and had followed though with designs for its production.

In Miller Chapel in Tuesday 19 October, Dr. Cleo LaRue and Dr. Ellen Charry were formally promoted to the rank of full professor and Dr. Bruce McCormack was installed in the Chair of Systematic .

Subsequent to the meeting of the board, there was a convocation to mark the renaming and new direction of the School of Christian Vocation and Mission. Dr. Barbara Wheeler (president emerita of Auburn Theological Seminary), Dr Craig Dykstra (Senior Vice President [Religion] of the Lilly Foundation) and Mr. Ernest Kimmel (formerly Executive Presbyter of the Presbytery of New Brunswick) spoke and Dr. LaRue and the Reverend Gabriel Salguero responded. The convocation ended with an act of worship at which the Reverend Ruth-Aimée Belonni-Rosario preached.

Iain Torrance 23 October 2010

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