By Nate West
News Editor
Yesterday, Sister Margaret Carney, O.S.F., university president, outlined the steps St. Bonaventure and Hilbert College have taken since announcing they would launch a feasibility study to work closer as academic institutions.
“Since the announcements went out, the major efforts of both institutions have been setting up the feasibility study,” Sister Margaret said to a crowd of faculty, staff and students gathered in the Rathskeller. “A small, defined group on both campuses and a committee of board trustees from both campuses have signed confidentiality agreements and are authorized now to have access to confidential information from both campuses.”
The information will be posted on a secure portal, which is being provided by Lumsden and McCormick, LLP, Sister Margaret said. She, Michael Fischer, provost and vice president for academic affairs, and Emily Sinsabaugh, vice president of university relations, make up the group from St. Bonaventure who have access to the aforementioned portal.
The portal will contain information relating to both institutions’ finances, the quality of their physical assets, contracts they have entered into, insurance programs, personnel, marketing and public relations information, long-term planning, physical plant maintenance, compliance and regulatory laws, information technology and a section entitled ‘other.’ This material will be mounted to the portal and will be studied for five to six weeks by the two teams authorized to access them. During the first week of December, each institution will have a meeting to review whether or not they have enough information to move forward, Sister Margaret said.
“At that point, both boards will make a judgment as to whether or not they feel that they have seen enough documentation from this feasibility study to authorize the next step,” Sister Margaret said. “At this point in time, I can’t guarantee that the boards will be totally satisfied by their December meeting, but we’re hoping to at least have a very large percentage of this work done by the December meeting.”
Administrative groups from both institutions have met twice already, according to Sister Margaret. They met for the first time in late summer and again on Oct. 15 at Hilbert College. The third joint meeting will take place Monday at St. Bonaventure. At the meetings, each group of administrative officers paired up and shared with everyone the shape, structure, organization and duties of their administrative responsibilities.
“It was basically creating that massive overview of a large variety of administrative responsibilities,” Sister Margaret said.
On Monday, the two administrations will be planning for the December board meeting, so both of their boards receive a similarly-worded resolution, according to Sister Margaret. They will also attempt to develop prototypes of how future programming and administrative structures may be developed which would result in reduction of costs.
“Right now, what we are asking is can we develop a strategic alliance,” she said. “The big frustration for us is, it could end up being any one of four or five configurations depending on what the feasibility study surfaces is in everybody’s best interest and what our boards decide is in everybody’s best interest.”
Assuming both boards decide to continue to develop the strategic alliance, the following step will be bringing together task forces, made up of members of both campuses, who will study the best possible alliance between Hilbert and St. Bonaventure, according to Sister Margaret.
Sister Margaret then opened the floor and fielded questions. The audience, which consisted of Bonaventure professors, students, employees and some Hilbert faculty, asked questions primarily on the issues of increasing revenues and further developing academic programs via state-of-the-art technology.
Chris Stanley, professor of religious studies, asked for a specific example of how this strategic alliance could produce and increase in revenue. Sister Margaret used an example where a lecturer could visit both Hilbert and St. Bonaventure on one day. The cost could be split and both institutions could benefit from the event.
There is a significant difference in the tuitions of each institution (Hilbert charges approximately $19,900, whereas a St. Bonaventure’s tuition is around $29,000). The question was raised Joe Flanagan, director of alumni services, whether or not that would be taken into account during the feasibility study. For this question, Sister Margaret asked Fischer to answer.
“One of the things to understand is difference in sticker price and difference in net price,” Fischer said. “The sticker price, theirs is about two-thirds of ours. They also follow a real different model than we do with respect to financial aid. They tend, at the undergraduate level, to discount at a much lower rate we do. The question that I don’t have the precise answer to at this moment is how close are our net prices, but I know they’re a lot closer than that two-thirds gap.”
