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E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2011 > October > 03 > Entry
Antioch College gets a fresh start
The once-defunct Antioch College had a good month — students returned to campus after a three-year hiatus and the sale of a business founded in the college’s basement provided a multi-million dollar boost to the school’s endowment.
“I could use a few more months like September,” joked Mark Roosevelt, the president of the new Antioch College, which will begin classes Tuesday.
Campus, in the heart of Yellow Springs, has been transformed since the years after the college closed in 2008. The lawns are mowed, some buildings have reopened and 35 students, 53 faculty and staff are busy preparing for the first quarter of classes.
“Better days are here and hopefully better days are yet to come,” Roosevelt said.
Students and staff are wrapping up a nine-day orientation for the first “pioneer” class that will attend the reopened and so far unaccredited college on full scholarships. The Ohio Board of Regents signed off on Antioch’s request to seek accreditation, a process that will take four years or more.
Roosevelt hopes the class will grow to 75 next year and more than 100 the following year with a long-term plan of 1,200 in total enrollment.
Maisie Taibbi followed Roosevelt to Antioch from the Pittsburgh Public Schools district where he was superintendent for five years and worked to reform the teacher evaluation system and right the district’s finances.
“I knew this place had to be really special if he was coming here,” Taibbi said. “I wanted something special, something different.”
Taibbi’s sentiment was echoed by faculty members who are a mix of former staffers and new employees hired over some objections by tenured professors from the former college who felt they should receive positions at the new college.
Kristen Adler, an anthropologist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, said she took the job as one of six core faculty members because it was a “chance of a lifetime.”
The college plans to hire 10 more professors in the coming year who will work with the core members on a curriculum focused on “sustainability.”
“To be part of a college that is reopening is exciting,” Adler said. “It is a huge opportunity and a huge risk.”
Roosevelt, a descendent of former president and “rough rider” Teddy Roosevelt, said he realizes everyone involved with the college’s reopening is taking a chance. The first class, he said, has the “grit” required to make it work. “I think grit is one of the most important ingredients in making a life,” Roosevelt said. “This is a very gritty class.”
Determination may be essential, but finances continue to be job one for Roosevelt, who crisscrosses the country raising money to keep the college operating. He has donor commitments of $18 million of the $27 million it will take to operate the college over the next three years.
The school got a big boost earlier this month with the merger of the Yellow Springs Institute, an environmental monitoring company founded at the college, with ITT Corp. that led to a $34.7 million “check” to the college’s endowment.
Still, without alumni donations, which resurrected the college, the school couldn’t operate. “Alumni will have to keep us a float the next four or five years,” he said. After that, tuition will help fund operation, but donations will still be essential. “Tuition will never fully pay and it doesn’t at any liberal arts college.”
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