Lesley College Current Special Collections and Archives
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Lesley University DigitalCommons@Lesley Lesley College Current Special Collections and Archives Summer 1984 Lesley College Current (Summer-Fall,1984) Lesley College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/lesley_current Recommended Citation Lesley College, "Lesley College Current (Summer-Fall,1984)" (1984). Lesley College Current. 36. https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/lesley_current/36 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections and Archives at DigitalCommons@Lesley. It has been accepted for inclusion in Lesley College Current by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Lesley. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Summer/Fall 1984 The LE~LEYCOLLEgE A Twenty-Four Years' Presidency Don Orton Steps Down Catherine N. Stratton, Chairperson of the Board of Trusfees, has announced that Don Orton resigned as President of Lesley College, effective July 1, 1984. Dr. Orton will have a well-earned sabbatical leave through August 31, 1985. He will also be writing and doing research in his new office in Bouma Hall. Dr. Orton has served Lesley as President for twenty-four years. Although his leadership will be missed, he leaves as a legacy a college which has achieved international recognition. He has strengthened the quality and extended the number of College programs, and leaves an institution that is fiscally sound. All those associated with the College owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Orton for his creative leadership, his vision, and his commitment to all that Lesley represents. Robert D. Lewis, Executive Vice President, was appointed Acting President, effective July 1, 1984, and will serve in that role until a new president is appointed. Mrs. Stratton has directed Logan Clarke, College Trustee and Dean of the Dr. Don Orton at the Lesley/Agassiz Barbecue in May, 1983, with Joyce Hutchings, '86; Melodie Hartford Graduate Center, to chair a committee which will oversee the search Coolman, '86; Mary Pivarunis, '83; and Susan Leonard, '83. for a new president. Mr. Clarke plans to involve members of all the constituencies of the College in the national search process. Recapping Twenty-Four Years of a College Presidency (The following is an abstract of an DAO: First, that the College had a small liberal arts and education faculty ·defensively as possible. Problem solv interview Kathryn Furlong, Director of good foundation. My predecessor at Lesley had a better fix on the role ing creatively. Valuing heterogeneity Institutional Relations, held with Don A. Trentwell Mason White, the trustees, of a teachers college and could work and differences among group mem Orton shortly after he resigned the and faculty had set the College on a well together. bers. Diagnosing what worked-and presidency of Lesley College.) sound professional and academic KF: Anything else? didn't work-in good decision making. course. Second, the students, who of Confronting. Setting up priorities and course didn't know me at that time, DAO: Most important, I believe, was options. Seeing the importance of con KF: You have been president of struck me then, as they do now, as a compelling interest on my part to servative views as a check against Lesley for 24 years, the longest term of being professionally committed to introduce "group dynamics" to the unrealistic aspirations. any senior college president in New teaching. Prime candidates, I thought, College. England. What brought you to the For me, human-relations training for teachers of the young children of KF: What did you have in mind? opened new doors to my own growth College in 1%0? our country. DAO: Adding a substantial new that before then were closed. We role DAO: At the time I was invited to dimension to the culture of the played, brainstormed, planned, and be Lesley's second president, I was a KF: Can we return for a moment to College. In brief, I'd define group learned first hand, sometimes painfully, guest professor at Harvard. During the one or two innovations - I believe dynamics as "humanistic problem of the importance of risking and winter of '59 and spring of '60, every that's a term you favor - that you solving." I'd spent several summers as practicing new behaviors. Lesley has Lesley trustee personally visited me in wanted to introduce? a human relations trainer in Bethel, had and has a large number of risk my Harvard office and expressed DAO: Yes, that is a favorite phrase Maine -then the mecca of human takers. strong interest in my accepting the of mine. Well, for one thing I wanted relations training in the world. Through position. I was flattered. After some KF: In your opinion did group to operate in an institutional setting a variety of teaching and learning months' deliberation, looking over dynamics work at Lesley? unhindered by bureaucracy. I'd methodologies -some very avant three or four other opportunities, I finished seven years as Dean of garde then - to help participants to DAO: In my view, yes ... to a accepted. Education at the University of Utah, look with a fresh vision at themselves: considerable extent. We value people KF: Did you have some ideas about worked hard with the faculty on some how their behavior affected their and doing our jobs well. Over the past what you wanted to introduce to major changes, and had often seen relationships and influence on others. two decades or so, I think Lesley has Lesley as its new leader? those hard-won gains modified, often And, of course, what made their group acquired its own unique ethos. That, in distorted, by the upper eschelons. healthy and productive or, conversely, fact, was the conclusion of a case DAO: Yes. Before accepting the Moreover, there was a bitter antipathy writer from the Harvard Business presidency I often sat in White Hall what behaviors made their group at times between the liberal arts dysfunctional. School, Elizabeth Altman. In her case lounge anonymously and tried to get a faculty and those of us in teacher study of Lesley she wrote of the personal impression of what the education. I see that same senseless KF: What were some of the College as an innovational institution. College was really like. bickering revived today in many of the "productive behaviors?" She presented the Lesley case to a KF: What were your strongest large universities across the country. I DAO: Group members being able group of prominent international impressions? assumed, and I was correct, that the to listen to and give feedback as non- educators at Cambridge University in England six or seven years ago. KF: Let's take a look, if you don't mind, at Lesley during the so-called "turbulent sixties." DAO: I'm still connected with group dynamics and Lesley. I'd like to com ment on your question in a moment. But it was the Undergraduate faculty, under George Miller's leadership, that placed high and appropriate emphasis upon "experiential learning" as the centerpiece of Lesley's philosophy. And I can now get into the sixties by saying a word about governance and Lesley during that decade. Dr. Don Orton teaching his course, "Dynamics of Leadership in Small Groups," to Lesley Juniors and Seniors in October, 1961. 2 A Twenty-F.our Years' Presidency KF: You have just said that you and your DAO: A highly gifted and committed enrollments. Which, by the way, were LIBRARY administrative team examined changes faculty. Able administrators. But with a more precipitous than we had STWENTSERVICES that might be made in the administration different style - more collegial and expected. And that was due to the cap of Lesley. THIS PROJECTIS BEINGA deliberative. They have made several on property taxes - the principal DAO: Ultimately, and after a lot of innovations recently, the most source of school revenues in thought, reading, and discussions, I important being the human services Massachusetts and most other concluded that there was no best way major. In my opinion they have states - imposed by Proposition 2½. to operate the College. The "best way" balanced well the mix of liberal arts We didn't anticipate that. And it was depended on a variety of considera and professional education. But they responsible for our bringing to Lesley tions. What and where was the may be a year or two behind in three years ago the Programs in student market? The differences in introducing a new major. It will still be Management for Business and traditions of the collegial Under some while, I think, before Lesley Industry, now so ably led by Linda graduate School and the entrepre experiences a strong resurgence in Escobedo. neurial Graduate School. Different undergraduate enrollments in teacher KF: Could you say a word about styles of leadership at the College. education. As a career, teaching still PMBIand its importance to the Most important was our need to has a black eye, although that is College? attract a growing body of students. changing. The demographics in New England constitute a countervailing DAO: During 1983-84, the third year That meant some diversification in of its operation, PMBIaccounted for programs and a reasonable expansion force: a 40 percent drop in college-age population between 1982 and 1992. 600 full-time students. They represent of the mission of the College. We a substantial source of income. could no longer survive, I believed, by Teachers, especially those in the restricting our appeal only to those elementary grades, are grossly In my opinion the elegance of the who wanted careers in education . underpaid and undervalued. teaching and learning theory on which Dr. Don Orton with Maureen Sullivan and they are based is unsurpassed. Their Leslie Aitken at the Library classrooms mode of "delivering" educational groundbreaking in 1971.