[R]UTLAND — The College of St. Joseph may close in September because of an ongoing deficit, a failed new academic specialty and declining student enrollment.
A meeting of the college trustess that was to be held Monday to discuss the fate of the school was postponed to next week. Administrators said they were afraid that planned demonstrations would disrupt the meeting and threaten the safety of faculty, staff, trustees, alumni and members of the public.
Scores of students, faculty and some administrators met in the school auditorium anyway. President Lawrence Jensen and several members of the faculty went ahead with the presentation they had prepared for the trustees.
Several students hissed when Jensen approached the podium where he immediately addressed questions about the school’s precarious financial situation.
Jensen blamed falling enrollments for the school’s revenue problems. There are only 95 undergraduates registered for the fall of 2018, and 85 of them are returning students. With graduate, full-time and part-time students included, there are a total of 164 on the rolls for next year.
Last Thursday, Jensen sent an email to the college community explaining that the doors of the College of St. Joseph could shutter in September due to a loss of about $5 million in revenues. He said that they had hoped to bolster admissions and enroll a total of 250 undergraduate students next year, but that effort failed and only 10 new students have enrolled.
A $5 million endowment was spent on a new physician assistant program that didn’t take off and plans for a new dorm and dining hall that didn’t materialize, Jensen said Monday. In the current fiscal year, the college lost $2 million.
“We spent $2 million more than we took in,” Jensen said.
Students demanded to know where the money went. Jensen replied that the money went to pay for operating expenses, namely salaries for staff.
The College of St. Joseph has been running large, ongoing deficits for several years. In fiscal year 2015, for example, the college employed 174 people and paid about $4.5 million in salaries, according to 2015 tax forms. Tuition and fees that year raised $5.2 million. The total revenue was $7.6 million but total expenses were $10.1 million leaving the school about $2.6 million in the red.
Lisa Leah Chalidze, a member of the faculty, said there was a meeting last September in which the administration presented “mystifying and contradictory” information to the faculty about the school’s financial problems. She spent months trying to find out what was going on and still doesn’t have enough solid data to share.
Chalidze said she had no confidence in the integrity of the information. “I even went to the town clerk’s office in Rutland to search land records to figure out how much money we borrowed and how much we owed. I still don’t know where the money went.”
Chalidze said $2.5 million was spent on architectural drawings for new construction and renovations of some of the buildings, one of which was full of asbestos that had to be remediated. Payroll “rocketed during that period when we hired a lot of people for the PA program,” Chaldize said. The college spent about $2.5 million on the failed program.
In October, the faculty issued a vote of no confidence in Jensen’s leadership and some faculty put forward Roger Weeden, head of the radiology department, as a replacement, but Jensen didn’t step aside, according to Chalidze.
In February, Jensen gave notice he would retire at the end of the academic year. Again, some faculty supported Weeden for the post, but the board began an extensive national search for a new president.
At the meeting, students held up posters promoting Weeden for president and chanted their support.
Chalidze said the board has suspended the search, even though Weeden is willing to take over at a reduced salary.
James Lambert, vice president of external affairs, said the board needs to determine if the school needs to close before the search is resumed. “We are holding off on the process until we see what comes of this situation.”
Chalidze and Weeden presented several revenue generating ideas that could keep the college running, including leveraging a day care program and senior living apartments, starting nursing and public safety programs, along with an already planned Traumatology Institute.
“Our job is to give you an education and a career. There is no reason we should be in this situation,” Weeden said.
Although the college is on shaky fiscal ground, it has not lost accreditation from the New England Association of Small Colleges. Chalidze said NEASC has seen the school’s financials as has Heritage, their lender, and they have not pulled their support.
Trustees plan to meet next week to “gather information and public input” on the school’s future, Lambert said.
“It’s certainly not anyone’s desire to close the college,” Lambert said. “However, given a difficult enrollment outlook for next year, it is one of several options that must be considered by the board if we don’t find a solution and become sustainable in the long-term.”
The small Catholic college has been a fixture in Rutland since 1956. It was founded by a group of nuns and initially offered training for teachers. In 1960, the college began offering bachelor’s degrees in education. Academic programs expanded over time, and the college now teaches courses in business administration, counseling, criminal justice, public safety administration, health sciences, sonography and golf course management.