STAYING THE COURSE

About the Book

Staying the Course is about a college that many describe as being “ the way colleges used to be: beautiful, well-maintained buildings and grounds; caring, capable faculty; administrators who manage frugally and compassionately; a bright, energetic president willing to dedicate his life to assuring a solid future for the institution; and students who study hard and work hard to serve those in need.” Still the college struggles to maintain what it has built and to increase its endowment, small by comparison to many private institutions, at the same time it continues to hold tuition low and provide funding to students who, even with Pell grants, need extra help to go to and stay in college. How the college is managing to build a sustainable financial base is described in chapters focusing on the kinds of students who attend, the faculty who teach, the administrators who oversee the multiple programs that support the students as well as design new courses and new ways of teaching, the trustees who guide the college, and the president who has stayed long enough to see many of his dreams for the college realized, to shape new dreams and to raise the funding that makes those dreams realities. The college still struggles in many ways but its struggles are far less than they would be without the lessons the institution has learned and is offering to other small, private colleges facing similar difficult circumstances. With the many stories about the sad state of higher education today, this book contradicts those stories with its description of how merging the values of the past with the information and strategies available today can enable a small college in a region of poverty and with a population of students with limited financial resources to rise above those threats and limitations to become a model for the future of such institutions.

About the Author

After graduating from Appalachian State University with a B.S. and M.A. in English and from the University of Kentucky with a doctorate in Higher Education, Dr. Brown taught at Ohio University and Eastern Kentucky University and served as conference coordinator for Eastern and for the University of Kentucky. At UK, she helped develop what became an independent organization known as the Appalachian College Association and served 25 years as president of that organization. The experiences she had working with the faculty and administrators of the small, private colleges in Appalachia left her with an understanding of why so many fail and so few thrive despite the competence and commitment of many of the individuals within those institutions. She also came to realize how many major foundations and federal agencies are willing to provide financial assistance to colleges that can show promising efforts toward building a sustainable financial base all the while they are providing a strong liberal arts education primarily to students with few financial resources. Her concern about the needs of such colleges led her to write three books about their strengths and weaknesses. The first two, Changing Course and Cautionary Tales, were published by Jossey-Bass (2011) and Stylus (2012), respectively. Those focus on colleges that had closed or come close to closing. Her newest work focuses on one small college that offers lessons that could prove valuable to colleges struggling to build a solid future despite the disadvantages they face as a result of their locations, current national economic issues, and the growing population of poor students. Between books, she consults with individual private colleges and non-profit organizations to help shape their fund-raising efforts. In recognition of her contributions to this important segment of higher education she has received numerous awards, including six honorary degrees.