Call to Purpose : Mission-Centered Change at Three Liberal Arts Colleges 9781317849476, 9780415935661

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STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION DISSERTATION SERIES

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Philip G. Altbach

Monan Professor of Higher Education Lynch School of Education, Boston College

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STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION PHILIP G. ALTBACH, General Editor SAVING F O R C O L L E G E A N D T H E T A X

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T H E VIRTUAL DELIVERY AND

in

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A C all

to

P urpose

Mission-Centered Change at Three Liberal Arts Colleges

Matthew Hartley

Published in 2002 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2002 by Taylor &c Francis Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hartley, Matthew. Call to purpose : mission-centered change in three liberal arts colleges / by Matthew Hartley. p. cm. — (Studies in higher education, dissertation series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-415-93566-0 1. Universities and colleges—United States—Administration—Case studies. 2. Educational planning—United States—Case studies. 3. Mission statements—United States—Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. LB2341.H325 2002 78.1'01—dc!3 2002068015

Contents

1 CHAPTER

Introduction: More Th an Just "Mission" CHAPTER

3

2

A Th ematic Account of th e Development of Institutional Purpose About th e selection of sites A word about time frames Institutional malaise Ending th e stalemate Creating a mandate for ch ange Toward a common purpose Implementing th e vision Struggles over ideology: True believers and naysayers The dark side of ch ange Discovering you've arrived: Symbols of Success Reaching th e end of th e life cycle of ch ange

17 19 20 21 24 28 30 34 37 40 43 44

CHAPTER 3

The Search for Purpose as Institutional Revitalization A crisis of purpose Rejection of th e status quo and building th e consensus for ch ange Arriving at a new vision Birth of a Movement: True believers, supporters, fence sitters and naysayers Implementing th e vision ν

49 50 53 55 57 58

vi

Contents Realizing the vision and the social construction of success Mission creation as a socio-cultural movement Comparing belief systems: Then and now Toward a new ideology

60 62 65 70

CHAPTER 4

The Power, Politics, and Pathology of Ideologically Based Change The politics of advancing a new vision Rewriting the social contract Pushing for change Securing change Constructing the enemy Witch-hunting at Olivet An analysis of the witch hunt

75 75 76 79 83 86 90 96

CHAPTER 5

Sustaining A Sense of Purpose and the Social Construction of Success New programs and policies Betterment of institutional life Enhanced attractiveness of the community Challenging members' conceptions of success The inestimable value of success Tempered idealism Sustaining community

99 102 103 104 107 108 109 115

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion Findings Leadership in the cultural realm Future research Appendix A Research Design and Methodology

117 118 122 126

129

BIBLIOGRAPHY

139

INDEX

145

A CALL TO PURPOSE

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: More than Just "Mission"

O

N A N O A K - C R O W N E D Q U A D , J U S T INSIDE T H E L O B B Y O F T H E M A I N

academic building is a bronze plaque on which is written the mission of a liberal arts college. That plaque is emblematic of how institutional missions tend to be viewed—impressive and immutable, a distillation of the aspirations, loyalties, and interests of a collective into one statement. But the plaque and the words upon it are merely a remnant, an artifact of a complex and powerful socio-cultural phenomenon. A mission statement describes the fruits of that process as a catechism captures the evolution of a living faith across a multitude of adherents—imperfectly. Colleges and universities are expressions of faith in certain idealistic notions. America is an idealistic country. Throughout our history we have served as a haven for hundreds of Utopian communities and social movements (Kanter 1972; Pitzer 1997). America has also given birth to thousands of institutions of higher learning under the premise that individual lives and the larger society can be improved—perhaps even transformed— through the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Some colleges and universities have developed very specific notions about what constitutes a worthwhile education. They have created distinctive missions (Townsend, Newell et al. 1992). However, the efficacy of liberal learning, instruction in a useful trade, or preparation for enlightened citizenry are themes common to most founding documents (which read more like manifestoes than legal contracts). In each generation, the heirs of these institutions face questions of purpose: Whom do we serve? How shall we serve them? What is our reason for being? The future of our colleges and universities depends upon the 3

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answers to those questions. I offer this observation not as hyperbole but as bedrock fact: Our institutions necessarily reflect our educational philosophies, whether explicit or tacit. We are therefore faced with a choice: we can either actively work toward realizing our ideals or passively allow our institutions to be shaped by impersonal and perhaps inimical forces. Without a well-defined mission, our ability to safeguard, never mind advance our own visions, is compromised. As more and more constituents lay claim to our services, there is a danger that we will drift from our core purposes. Those forces have grown stronger during the past century as higher education has emerged as an enterprise central to our knowledge-based society and economy. Today, state legislatures and Boards of Education seek a better-trained workforce and "more relevant" research for their money (Lazerson 1997; Carlin 1999). In the aftermath of Bayh-Dole, corporations now establish partnerships with universities in return for a share in the profits when products come to market. Corporate partners may secure a say in the type of research conducted, as in the much-touted deal between U.C. Berkeley and Novartis (Blumenstyk 1 9 9 8 ) . Rising tuitions coupled with declining public support, have led our institutions to embrace more and more business-like practices—auctioning "pouring rights" to Pepsi and Coke (Noble 2 0 0 0 ) , outsourcing functions to private firms (Kirp 2 0 0 2 ) , and using sophisticated discounting models to yield the preferred students. For-profit institutions build degree programs around conceptions of convenience and drain students away (Marchese 1 9 9 8 ) . Colleges and universities have adapted themselves to remain competitive and viable but the mad scramble for students and dollars has exacted a toll. Robert Zemsky and associates (Institute for Research in Higher Education 1999) note: Probably the most lasting as well as troubling effect of this increasing reliance on the market to distribute students and resources among institutions is the erosion of guiding purpose in institutions themselves. . . . Having lost sight of the bearings that had earlier guided them, many institutions find themselves at a loss of how to resume course (p. 6 ) .

In such a tumultuous and competitive market, what internal compass enables them to retain their bearings and not lose their way? The answer is mission. The central argument of this book is that academic communities benefit from a shared sense of purpose, and that it is possible for institutions that have lost a clear sense of purpose to regain it. This book describes the experiences of three such communities: LeMoyne-Owen College, in Memphis, Tennessee, Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, and Tusculum

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College in Greeneville, Tennessee. A decade ago these three liberal arts colleges were in crisis. The environment had grown increasingly competitive and hostile. Enrollments had declined or stagnated. Communication between the administration and the faculty had devolved into bickering and even infighting. Stale and incoherent curricula, the decay of the physical plants, widespread anxiety about the future, and a fierce defense of the status quo by the administration (and some senior faculty members) all had degraded institutional life. As one faculty member expressed: "We just didn't know who we were anymore." Yet, at each institution there emerged an unexpected rekindling of idealism. Individuals sought meaningful change and their efforts triggered a larger collective effort to envision and implement a new and compelling educational purpose for their institution. These purpose-centered change efforts animated prodigious transformations—new academic calendars, the dismantling of distribution requirements and the creation of core curricula, and a range of new programs and policies. They also brought about the re-patterning of institutional relationships. As a majority of institutional members came to embrace the new vision, relationships between previously estranged groups and individuals were restored. These three cases offer key insights into how mission matters for academic communities and how a new, compelling sense of purpose is created. LIBERAL ARTS INSTITUTIONS: BELLWETHERS O F CHANGE

Liberal arts colleges comprise only a modest percentage of our institutions of higher learning (Breneman 1994). Nevertheless, their impact in higher education has been disproportionate. In part this is because they are the archetype. In the popular imagination, education occurs on a residential, self-contained, ivy covered campus with Mr. Chips teaching students inside the classroom and shaping their characters outside of it. James Garfield's famous dictum that the perfect college is President Mark Hopkins (of Williams College) at one end of a log and a student on the other suggests the powerful allure of an education predicated on personal attention and dedicated to the life of the mind. As David Breneman notes, liberal arts colleges are "single-purpose institutions, with no rationale for existence beyond their capacity to educate undergraduate students" (Breneman 1994 p. 4). This ideal dominated American higher education for much of the past 3 5 0 years and it continues to exert a powerful influence. Even at larger universities (many of which began as small residential colleges), the use of house systems and other residential devices for dividing large campuses, the growing phenomenon of learning communities, and calls for faculty to embrace anew their roles as teachers and mentors are all examples of efforts to recapture some the vibrancy of the small intellectual community

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dedicated to learning for its own sake and a broad educational experience whose primary end is enlightenment rather than competency in a trade. Liberal arts colleges are invaluable to educational researchers because they have historically been bellwethers of change. They are the "indicator species" of American higher education, signaling the health or fragility of the overall system. Most are tuition dependent and therefore keenly attentive to shifts in the interests of students or the needs of their localities. In the early nineteenth century, "Geographical expansion, political populism, and religious denominationalism all threatened the classical curriculum of the liberal arts college" (p. 2 8 6 ) . The response was a reaffirmation of the liberal arts ideal in the Yale Declaration of 1 8 2 8 . "Another [challenge] came in the fourth quarter of that same century when the example of German scholarship guided the emergence of the research university" (p. 2 8 7 ) . For many institutions, this signaled the beginning of their shift from college to university, although most "[pledged] fidelity to the traditions of 'liberal and humane learning'" (p. 2 8 7 ) . In the twentieth century, the upheaval of the Sixties brought an end to in loco parentis and increased student choice in terms of curricular offerings and greater autonomy outside of the classroom. Warren Bryan Martin (1984) comments, "The record . . . shows modern liberal arts colleges to be a curious mixture of traditions and innovation, or as Pfinster puts it, 'a study in persistence within change, continuation within adaptation'" (p. 2 8 6 ) . Liberal arts colleges have continually adjusted to meet current contingencies. In the late twentieth century, however, these adjustments imperiled their sense of identity and purpose. T H E E R O S I O N O F MISSION AT LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES IN T H E 1980s The 1980s were particularly difficult times for many small colleges. There were growing fears about enrollment shortfalls. Demographic shifts indicated a sharp decline in the number of "traditional-age" students (Leslie, Grant, and Brown in Zammuto 1984). The economy was in a seemingly intractable recession and inflation was high. Many institutions were forced to reduce expenses through layoffs, and retrenchment damaged morale. Experts painted dire scenarios for higher education. George Keller, in the opening salvo of Academic Strategy (1983) asserted: A specter is haunting higher education: The specter of decline and bankruptcy. Experts predict that between 10 percent and 3 0 percent of America's 3 , 1 0 0 colleges and universities will close their doors or merge with other institutions by 1 9 9 5 . On many campuses the fear of imminent contraction or demise is almost palpable (p. 3).

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In an effort to compete for students, many colleges began pursuing enrollment-driven strategies—adding programs and services based on their presumed ability to attract or help retain students. Shifts in the labor market and student attitudes rendered pre-professional programs far more popular than the traditional liberal arts and ultimately displaced them at many, if not most, liberal arts campuses (Knox, Lindsay et al. 1 9 9 3 ; Breneman 1 9 9 4 ; Delucchi 1997). Although many colleges continued to profess a commitment to liberal learning, the vast majority were graduating humanists carrying briefcases, stethoscopes, or the Wall Street Journal. This shift in mission exacted a price. One observer warned that, while the expansion into professional programs was a promising short-term strategy for bolstering enrollment, it also threatened institutional focus, which might ultimately "cause these institutions a number of problems during the 1980s and 1 9 9 0 s " (Zammuto 1 9 8 4 , p. 2 0 9 ) . What Zammuto foresaw was a crisis of purpose stemming from the abandonment of these institutions' core missions as liberal arts institutions. In time, many small, independent colleges were loosed from their traditional academic moorings and drifted away from their founding purposes (Breneman 1994; Delucchi 1997). Zammuto's prescience was confirmed in a study conducted by Ellen Earle Chaffee in the 1980s. Chaffee examined fourteen liberal arts institutions that had experienced serious financial difficulties: "One set made a dramatic recovery; the other set did not" (Chaffee 1 9 8 4 , p. 2 1 3 ) . In comparing the two groups, Chaffee found that the colleges whose strategies were primarily opportunistic or "adaptive" to market demands were less successful at overcoming their financial difficulties than institutions whose adaptive strategies were "tempered by interpretive approaches" (Chaffee 1 9 8 4 , p. 2 1 7 ) . To Chaffee, institutions engage in interpretive work when they make decisions by "interpreting" the institutional mission and pursuing strategies that are consonant with that mission. Chaffee found that such institutions were "selective in responding to opportunities and invested heavily in conceptual and communication systems that guided and interpreted any organizational change" (p. 2 1 3 ) . The shared sense of mission helped members determine which policies or programs conformed to (or contradicted) their articulated mission. While good news for colleges that have a clearly defined sense of purpose, those without that sense face a more guarded prognosis. T H E CHALLENGE O F MISSION MAKING Colleges and universities are called upon to articulate their missions repeatedly. It is a central aspect of admissions and development work. Accreditation agencies require a statement of purpose during the self-study

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process. Strategic planning activities begin with a description of the institution's "mission." Why is it, then, that mission making is most often met with raised eyebrows and more than a touch of ennui? During the 1 9 8 0 s , countless organizations expended enormous amounts of time drafting mission statements, only to later quietly file them away. Organizational researchers have identified myriad examples of mission-centered change efforts that have come up short (Kotier 1995). Either the rhetorical pyrotechnics were viewed by institutional members as wholly divorced from reality or they handsomely stated what everyone already knew. Such fruitlessness is reflected in the higher education literature as well (Davies 1 9 8 6 ; Boyer 1987; Newsom and Hayes 1 9 9 1 ) . Although Newsom and Hayes (1991) eloquently state that a mission statement should be " a revelation of [a] college's reason for being" (p. 2 8 ) , their analysis of 93 mission statements led them to conclude that most are "amazingly vague, evasive, or rhetorical, lacking specificity of clear purposes" (p. 2 9 ) . A member of one prestigious liberal arts college interviewed for Boyer's landmark study on undergraduate life ruefully described the futility of the purpose-making efforts at that institution: 1

We've had half-a-dozen committees at different points in the past looking at what our goals are, were, and should be. Then, sometimes, they get as far as making a statement, which doesn't provide for any action, and of course is lost or forgotten by the time someone else decides in a year or two that we really need a committee to set goals (p. 5 9 ) .

It is tempting to conclude that such efforts are worthless—in fact, it may be more appropriate to term them meaningless. Though the research that spurred these activities had concluded that successful organizations were clear about their institutional missions, it was a mistake to presume that simply writing a mission statement could produce a collective sense of purpose. And yet, as late as the mid-1990s, the AAC reported that 80 percent of colleges and universities were making major revisions in their mission statements, goals, curricula, and general education courses (Author 1994). These halting efforts suggest that we have an impoverished understanding of the complexity of purpose making and a limited view of how mission matters. Though the benefits of having a clear purpose have been described (Clark 1 9 7 2 ; Keller 1 9 8 3 ; Chaffee 1 9 8 4 ; Tierney 1992) and recommended (Rice and Austin 1 9 8 8 ; Austin 1 9 9 0 ; Smith and Reynolds 1 9 9 0 ) , the process by which colleges and universities might go about clarifying their academic missions remains largely unexplored (Delucchi 1 9 9 7 p. 4 2 4 ) . This gap exists in the literature on organizations more generally. James March and Johan Olsen (1981) note: "There is a need for introducing ideas

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about the process by which beliefs are constructed in an organizational setting" (p. 2 5 6 ) . Efforts at mission making have been careful, logical, direct and utterly ineffective. Irwin Sander's, in exploring the idea of the academic community remarks, "Members of an organization have no sense of community if they do not agree in general on the purpose of that organization" (Sanders 1973 p. 5 8 ) . As an organization dedicated to rational inquiry, a college or university tends to approach mission by articulating strategic goals and formulating complex plans, but these efforts fail to generate much excitement. They satisfy the head but not the heart. Henry Mintzberg notes, "The problem is that [our] planning represents a calculating style of management, not a committing style." (p. 109) (Emphasis in the original.) How, then, does one produce commitment? Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in her sociological study of Utopian communities, identified a number of "commitment mechanisms"—means by which individuals are bound to a collective effort (Kanter 1972). Andrew Pettigrew, in response to Kanter's work observes: [Studying] commitment mechanisms begs the question of commitment to what. . . . Visions are not merely the stated purpose of an organization, though they may imply such a purpose, but they also are and represent the system of beliefs and language which give the organization texture and coherence. The vision will state the beliefs, perhaps implying a sacredness of quality to them, use a distinctive language to define roles, activities and challenges, and purposes and in so doing help to create the patterns of meanings and consciousness defined as organizational culture. (Pettigrew 1979) p. 5 7 7 .

To create a robust sense of purpose requires something far beyond rhetorical flourish. It requires reshaping institutional life (e.g., programs and policies) around a particular idea or set of ideas—giving expression to the beliefs and values of the members. H O W MISSION M A T T E R S A variety of terms are used to express the broader concept of institutional purpose. The two most common are "mission" and "vision." Sometimes the words are used synonymously. In other instances, a line of distinction is drawn (Vaill, 1 9 9 8 ; Collins and Porras 1996) with "mission" emphasizing hard-nosed operational goals and "vision" reflecting the dreams and aspirations of a group. Burt Nanus (1992) points out, " A vision is not a mission. To state that an organization has a mission is to state its purpose, not its direction" (p. 31). Vaill explains:

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We will call the bare statement of why the organization exists and what it intends to do the mission. We will call its human meaning and the difference that the mission makes in the world the vision. If the mission is the words, the vision is the music (p. 64).

Collins and Porras' (1996) comprehensive research led them to conclude that "visionary" organizations have a "core ideology"—beliefs and values that would be adhered to even if they caused a competitive disadvantage—and have an "envisioned future." Thus, a shared institutional purpose not only describes what we do (operational aims), it encompasses who we are (institutional identity) and what we aspire to (vision). The literature suggests that a clear purpose influences institutional life in two ways. First, it informs day-to-day decision-making. Two disparate missions (e.g., "cultivating liberally educated scholars" and "providing exceptional vocational training") will likely lead to decidedly different notions about which behaviors or ideas are valued or proscribed (Ouchi 1980; Schein 1985). If the core purpose of a particular college is promoting the liberal arts, a proposal for a major in automotive design will face intense scrutiny. This is not to say that all curricular innovation outside of the traditional liberal arts is anathema, rather that the liberal arts ideal serves as a broad framework within which decisions are made and policies are produced. A well-defined mission is a touchstone, a kind of common law by which information is interpreted and decisions made. It is a means by which individuals and groups coordinate their common efforts and it reduces the likelihood that they will inadvertently act at cross-purposes. Thus, a clear purpose reinforces common priorities, which produces greater social and programmatic cohesion (Wilkins and Ouchi 1983). Secondly, a shared purpose has the capacity to ennoble work and to promote a sense of importance and uniqueness about the work at hand (Selznick 1957; Clark 1 9 7 2 ; Martin, Feldman et al. 1 9 8 3 ; Peterson, Cameron et al. 1986). This can generate tremendous energy and commitment (Pettigrew 1 9 7 9 ; Ouchi 1 9 8 1 ; Martin, Feldman et al. 1983). One quantitative study of independent colleges concluded that a clear mission correlates with high faculty morale (Rice and Austin 1988). As in the case of the two masons who described their work alternatively as: "laying down stone" and "building a cathedral," missions have the capacity to inspire. Organizations apparently benefit from answering the workplace equivalent of the great existential question: "Why are we here?" Yet, our understanding of "mission" and our descriptions of its influence tend to be overly simplistic. For example, when an institution is described as "having a clear mission" the tacit assumption is that the institutional purpose is widely shared, uniformly understood, and holds constant over time. The factors that may influence a member of an organiza-

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tion, or groups within that organization, to either embrace or reject a "clarified" institutional mission have not been sufficiently explored. Nor do we know a great deal about how that mission is then interpreted and operationalized. The literature points to mission as a starting point for change (Thomson and Strickland, 1 9 9 6 ; Matthes, 1 9 9 3 ; Byars, 1 9 9 1 ; David, 1 9 9 1 ) , what happens when an institution wants to regain a lost sense of purpose? MISSION, VISION, AND PURPOSE This question of how a shared sense of purpose develops draws us into a realm of organizational theory that has gained increasing attention over the past two decades—the study of organizational culture. Humans are "sensemaking" creatures (Weick 1995). As Clifford Geertz (1973) famously observed, each of us is suspended in "webs of significance" we spin ourselves. In our professional work, these webs are spun collectively forming that "invisible tapestry" (Kuh and Whitt 1988) of shared beliefs, values, and norms known as organizational culture (Schein 1 9 8 5 ; Trice and Beyer 1993; Ashkanasy, Wilderom and Peterson, 2 0 0 0 ) . The study of these often-implicit social conventions has become one of the most important areas of organizational research. Ouchi and Wilkins argue, [Organizational culture has become one of the major domains of organizational research, and some might even argue that it has become the single most active arena, eclipsing studies of formal structure, of organization-environment research and of bureaucracy" (Ouchi and Wilkins 1 9 8 5 p. 4 5 7 - 4 5 8 )

It is an area of inquiry of special importance to colleges and universities. As "loosely coupled" organizations (Weick 1976), individual departments tend to function independently from one another and there is little strict central coordination. Instead, what holds our institutions together are shared norms and values—that is, our institutional cultures. William G. Tierney defines organizational culture as: the shared assumptions of the institution's actors. The symbols, myths, histories, and ideologies of the institutions reflect the culture. . . . Culture, then, is interpreted, negotiated, and constantly reconfigured by the ever-changing circumstances in which we find ourselves (Tierney 1 9 9 2 p. 16).

The various cultural forms have an internal coherence. That is, institutional members experience them as a totality—an "invisible tapestry" to use George Kuh and Elizabeth Whitt's phrase (Kuh and Whitt 1988). The coherent set of beliefs held by institutional members about their work con-

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stitute an organizational ideology (Trice and Beyer 1993), and the central beliefs of any strong organizational culture—one that is resilient, efficient, and engenders commitment—have to do with questions of purpose (Ouchi 1 9 8 1 ; Deal and Kennedy 1 9 8 2 ; Peters and Waterman 1 9 8 2 ; Wilkins and Ouchi 1 9 8 3 ; Banner and Gagne 1 9 9 5 ; Collins and Porras, 1994). T H E PURPOSE O F THIS STUDY

I was initially drawn to LeMoyne-Owen, Olivet, and Tusculum Colleges because they seemed to be particularly good examples of institutions that had responded to significant crises with comprehensive change efforts. What emerged during the course of my research was the importance of purpose—its capacity to inspire and motivate, even in the face of long odds. A renewed institutional purpose proved a potent antidote for despair. It formed the ideological foundation that drew together disparate individuals to a common cause. At LeMoyne-Owen, this entailed reclaiming a proud legacy as an elite locus of liberal learning for the Black community in Memphis. Olivet and Tusculum rediscovered and ultimately reinterpreted their founding purposes in order to craft "distinctive" missions that would enable them to stand apart from (and compete more effectively with) rival institutions. These stories are instructive for three reasons: 2

1. They point out that mission making requires more than the drafting of a statement, it requires an effort akin to a sociocultural movement. 2 . These accounts suggest that there is a dark side of ideologically driven change. Although a strong sense of purpose can be a powerful cohesive force, it also has the potential to alienate individuals whose personal convictions do not correspond to the new vision. 3 . These stories have much to teach us about leadership in the cultural realm and the strategies that individuals use to promote a shared sense of purpose.

Mission-making is a complex socio-cultural phenomenon Researchers have tended to focus on organizations with a clear sense of mission in an effort to describe the benefits of having one. It is as if medical research focused on explaining the importance of exercise and a wellbalanced diet and paid no attention to devising strategies for the majority of us whose lifestyles might benefit from change. This research describes the efforts undertaken by three colleges to recapture and revitalize their

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sense of purpose. Like all strategies intent on influencing human behavior, their results were neither straightforward nor was the progress strictly linear. However, this book suggests some fundamental principles of mission making. The most important insight is that purpose or mission is the byproduct of a complex phenomenon—one that entails surfacing shared values and beliefs, and developing a vision that animates and directs them. The events at these colleges suggest that creating a sense of purpose is very much like a social or cultural movement in which a collection of individuals are drawn to a particular cause. Over time, as people joined these movements, the visions shifted and were adapted in order to accommodate the new members. The sense of purpose evolved, taking on distinct characteristics at the beginning, middle, and end of the change efforts. This research describes how the vision came into being, shifted, and served as a central unifying idea during times of change. The dangers of purpose-centered change It is easy when discussing "mission" or "vision" to emphasize the sunny side of having a clear purpose. These accounts suggest there are dangers as well. The power and pervasiveness of the new vision and its impact on institutional life suggest that these processes ultimately represent the forging of a new dominant ideology—a coherent set of beliefs about the central aims and purpose of these institutions. Yet, as the ideology became codified, there were clear winners and losers. Establishing priorities placed some departments and individuals at the center of the change effort and marginalized others. Individuals that had previously felt comfortable within the organization chafed at the dictates of the new vision. A few saw it as pure flimflam. In response, the zeal of the proponents became so intense that in some cases they grew suspicious of those who withheld their support. At one college, the increasing paranoia led to witch-hunts, which cost some of the more ardent members of the opposition their jobs and coerced others into an uneasy silence. Although a sense of purpose can be ennobling, it also has the capacity to blind and to shut down discourse. Leadership in the cultural realm One of the chief means by which a leader is able to influence others is by shaping their perspectives on events (Deal and Kennedy 1982; Schein 1 9 8 5 ; Weick 1 9 9 5 ; Bolman and Deal 1997). Winning hearts and minds is a conception of leadership that has received relatively less attention, however, than more overt structural or political strategies (Bolman and Deal 1997). Trice and Beyer (1993), in their comprehensive discussion of the literature on organizational culture, point to this deficit: "The role of leaders in the

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culture of organizations has thus far received only scattered attention" (p. 255). These cases illuminate key aspects of cultural leadership. They are descriptive of the kind of symbolic leadership that Chaffee referred to when she observed, "presidents who base their actions on symbolic as well as substantive concerns will be more effective turnaround leaders than those who are not conscious of the symbolic implications" (Chaffee 1984 p. 2 3 4 ) . Despite their important role at these institutions, the accounts also underscore the limitations of presidential authority (Cohen and March 1974; Birnbaum 1 9 9 2 ) . Effective leaders in the symbolic realm exert influence indirectly—they persuade rather than dictate. The leadership required for such broad-based socio-cultural change went far beyond presidential efforts. Rodney T. Ogawa and Steven Bossert (1995) have suggested that leadership is an organizational quality, not a characteristic embodied in any one "leader." "Leadership flows through the networks of roles that comprise organizations" (p. 2 2 5 ) . These purpose-centered change efforts produced countless opportunities for leadership. In addition to the president, faculty members and staff members who were "true believers" also shaped the collective understanding of where the institution needed to go, and why. ROADMAP T O THIS B O O K

Readers interested in a detailed description of the development of institutional purpose at these three colleges will find a cross-case, chronological account in chapter two. Chapter three provides an analysis of these processes and draws parallels between the formation of an institutional mission and "revitalizations," a socio-cultural phenomenon in which a community restructures itself in an attempt to create a more satisfying collective life. All revitalizations follow a distinct pattern, one that corresponds to the purpose-centered change efforts at these three colleges. The resulting cultural renewal causes the reformulation of norms and beliefs as people come to embrace the new purpose. Chapter three describes how member beliefs changed in three distinct areas: 1) curricular philosophy; 2) the relationships between individuals and groups; and 3) perceptions regarding the institution's future. Ultimately what is produced is a new institutional ideology. Chapter four describes the power of ideologically based change and it also explicates its potential dangers. Ideology has the capacity to inspire dogmatism as well as solidarity. Chapter five describes the life cycle of socio-cultural change. The analysis points out that an institutional mission is not a static concept but an idea that the sponsoring community embraces over time. The importance of symbolic successes is also explicated. Chapter six presents an overview of the findings, practical

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advice for those who wish to advance purpose-centered change, and it outlines areas for future study. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is an outgrowth of my dissertation research. E.L. Doctorow once observed that writing a book is like driving at night: You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make an entire journey that way. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the many people who illuminated my path: Judith B. McLaughlin, exemplary advisor and chair of my dissertation committee provided constant encouragement and invaluable advice. Richard P. Chait brought his prodigious analytic abilities to bear in detailed feedback and penetrating queries, which encouraged me always to dig deeper and to eschew the obvious and the timeworn. Susan Moore Johnson helped me keep my bearings with wisdom and good humor. Alixe Callen, Dave Ferrero, Bill Mallon, Bill Shorr, Julie Stewart, and Joel Vargas offered suggestions on early drafts of this manuscript. I am endebted to Philip Altbach, editor of this series, for his support and invaluable feedback. Special thanks goes to Jim LeBaron, whose editing magic during various stages of this process refined the manuscript. I am especially grateful to the faculty, administrators, and students of LeMoyne-Owen, Olivet and Tusculum colleges who participated in this research project. Finally, love and thanks go to my greatest supporter, Jennie and to Gib and Emma who reminded me to stop occasionally and go out and play. NOTES Indeed, this short-lived satisfaction is reminiscent of the famous Hawthorne studies, which demonstrated that morale could be boosted temporarily if people think efforts are being made to improve institutional life (Trice and Beyer, 1 9 9 3 p. 2 3 ) . A complete description of the methodology of this qualitative inquiry may be found in the appendix. 1

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CHAPTER 2

A Th ematic Account of th e Development of Institutional Purpose

L

E M O Y N E ­ O W E N , O L I V E T , A N D T U S C U L U M C O L L E G E S A R E PRODUCTS

of long and proud histories. LeMoyne-Owen, a historically Black college, traces its roots back to 1 8 6 2 , when the American Missionary Association (ΑΜΑ) sent Miss Lucinda Humphrey to open an elementary school for "freedmen" near Memphis, Tennessee. Four years later, the Lincoln School, as it was then called, was burned in a race riot following the pullout of federal troops. The school was rebuilt and reopened the following year with 150 students and six teachers in the city of Memphis. In 1 8 7 1 , with a $ 2 0 , 0 0 0 gift from Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne, a wealthy benefactor and a member of the ΑΜΑ, the school began its work educating Black teachers and raising up leaders for the Black community in Memphis and Shelby County. In 1924 LeMoyne became a j unior college, in 1934 it first offered a bachelors degree, and in 1 9 6 8 , LeMoyne merged with a nearby normal school, Owen College, and became LeMoyne-Owen College. In 1 8 4 4 , "Father" John J . Shipherd was "divinely inspired" to create a college. He led thirty-nine colonists from Oberlin College to a hilltop in the wilds of Michigan and in a reference to the Mount of Olives in the New Testament, he named the fledgling institution Olivet. The college's first catalog, printed in 1846, listed 72 students, " 3 9 ladies and 33 gentlemen." From its inception, Olivet was coeducational and devoted to Christian principles and manual labor. It was also the first private college by charter to admit students regardless of their race or gender. Olivet gained particular acclaim during the Presidency of Joseph Brewer ( 1 9 3 4 - 1 9 4 4 . ) Brewer brought the tutorial system from Oxford University and enticed a number

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of leading literary figures to come to the college for a time, including Ford Maddox Ford, Carl Sandburg, and Gertrude Stein. Tusculum, located in Greeneville, Tennessee, was founded in 1794 following the American Revolution. Its founders, Hezekiah Balch and Samuel Doak, mindful of the needs of a young nation, envisioned a liberal arts institution dedicated to preparing civic leaders for the American frontier. Tusculum is the oldest college in the state of Tennessee and the oldest coeducational college related to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Visit these three campuses today and you witness the busy contentment of academe. These institutions are visually archetypal of small, liberal arts institutions—Georgian-inspired brick buildings, wrought iron, lawns and paths traversed by small groups of animated undergraduates. If you speak with their faculty members and the administrators, certain core values of the academy emerge—among these, an eagerness to facilitate learning and an intense commitment to students. Examples of current curricular initiatives weave themselves into the conversation, qualified by thoughtful concerns about areas for improvement and a keen awareness of the challenges ahead. These are not wealthy institutions. They are not highly selective. But they do strike you as communities committed to their work and engaged in discussions about how they might do it better. It was not always so. By the late 1980s these three colleges had reached a critical turning point. Current institutional arrangements no longer seemed tenable. This was true of many institutions. Rapid and turbulent change was rocking American higher education (Chaffee 1 9 8 4 ; Breneman 1994; Delucchi 1997). The country was in the midst of a prolonged recession—escalating inflation coupled with rising unemployment (stagflation) had stalled the economy. Money was tight. Further, a demographic shift caused some to project that between 1979 and 1994 the total number of prospective students would decrease by fully twenty-five percent (Keller 1983 p. 12). Given the contracting job market, students increasingly clamored for professional programs in hopes of securing post-graduation employment. Many traditional liberal arts colleges responded by introducing professional majors—sometimes many of them (Breneman 1994). Indeed, nationwide the number of liberal arts majors sank to unprecedented lows. Many institutions scuttled general education or core requirements, which had been the enduring hallmark of liberal learning on these campuses. Instead, students were invited to choose from broad menus of courses to fulfill meager distribution requirements. In reflecting on those times, Virginia Smith (1993) notes: "The 1980s were studded with a whole galaxy of reports, not about the structure of our colleges and universities, not about governance, not about how to finance higher education, but about curriculum" (p. 4 3 ) . In his Handbook on Undergraduate Curriculum (1978), Arthur Levine called general education a "disaster area."

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The following chapter chronicles how these institutions responded to this crisis. Its primary purpose is to draw the reader's attention to the themes that emerged from people's accounts of how their institutions defined and attempted to realize a new purpose. A B O U T T H E S E L E C T I O N O F SITES

Before I describe that process, it will be helpful to explain how these three colleges were selected. Louis R. Pondy (1983) argues that "an effective theory-building strategy is to ground theory in a detailed understanding of individual cases, especially extreme cases" (p. 163). I sought to identify such cases first by speaking with representatives of seven higher education associations. I asked each to list institutions that, in their minds, had undertaken significant change efforts—broad-based reforms that influenced the entire institution, not merely the addition of a program or an isolated initiative. Based on their recommendations, I ultimately approached LeMoyne-Owen, Olivet, and Tusculum because they seemed to be exemplars of institutional transformation. Subsequent phone conversations with contacts from each campus revealed that these colleges had completely revised their general education or core curricula and had also made sweeping policy changes. I was particularly struck by the enthusiasm of the people—they clearly felt their institutions had accomplished something important. The three colleges seemed particularly well suited for a comparative study. They shared certain characteristics (e.g., institutional type, size of the faculty and student body, selectivity.) Further, each of the contacts noted that promoting responsibility to community was an important element of their institution's missions. However, I also thought it probable that differences among the institutions (e.g., history, region, culture, clientele) might have influenced their change process and shaped their conceptions of mission in interesting ways. I did not select the institutions because they employed similar strategies or because they were models of, say, shared governance. In fact, I knew precious little about how the changes had occurred. One well-known cartoon depicts a scientist filling a chalkboard with complex calculations and in the midst of them is written "and then a miracle occurs." In the same way, I began this research knowing that each of these colleges had once been in trouble. I knew that they had achieved remarkable results. But the process that led to those changes was a mystery. Fundamentally, the purpose of this research has been to explore the nature of these "miracles." The analysis in this chapter is derived from data collected during the fall of 1999 when I visited each institution for a week. More than sixty interviews were conducted, transcribed, and analyzed along with more 1

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than a thousand pages of institutional documents (e.g., faculty senate minutes, strategic plans, accreditation reports, admissions and development materials, letters and memos contemporary to the change efforts, accreditation materials.) A WORD ABOUT TIME

FRAMES

Although the events transpired in parallel ways on the three campuses, their time frames vary slightly. (See Figure 1.) It may be useful to briefly note some of the similarities and differences. Kanter (1977) observes that investigations of change efforts often begin with the decision to make the change, and argues persuasively that this approach prevents a full accounting of the context out of which the decision emerged. Therefore, the events described in this chapter begin at least two years before any specific change effort was advanced. At all three institutions, the process began with the removal of the president. In the following year an interim president presided over the institution and a presidential search was conducted. From the time the new president was selected, it took nearly a year for the faculty to develop and vote on specific academic changes. LeMoyne-Owen and Olivet were able to implement those changes beginning in the next year (although in Olivet's case, only freshmen were required to participate). At Tusculum, the comprehensive nature of the changes (e.g., switch to a focused calendar and redevelopment of the entire curriculum) required an extra year of planning. The biggest difference in time frames is the duration of the change-agent presidencies. McPhail stayed at LeMoyne-Owen not quite three years; Bassis departed after five years at Olivet; and Knott remained at Tusculum for a decade. Figure 1: Timeline of Major Events EVENT

Last year of the institutional "malaise" Vote of no confidence Presidential search Arrival of new president Faculty vote to implement changes (including new mission) Curricular changes are implemented Change-agent president departs

OLIVET

TUSCULUM

1985-1986

1991-1992

1988-1989

N/A 1986-1987 Summer 1987 Spring 1988

June 1992 1992-1993 Summer 1993 Spring 1994

lanuary 1988 1988-1989 Summer 1989 August 1990

1989-1990

1994-1995

1991-1992

Spring 1991

Spring 1998

Spring 1999

LEMOYNE-OWEN

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I N S T I T U T I O N A L MALAISE By the mid-1980s, these colleges faced a variety of problems. They were, in the words of one Olivet faculty member, "small and poor" and had been for years. External pressures weighed heavily on the institutions. A faculty member at LeMoyne-Owen noted: "In the late '80s, the college was really struggling with the financial situation." Similar concerns plagued Olivet and Tusculum. One faculty member at Olivet recalled: "We were in debt. We'd been in debt for a number of years, and hadn't balanced the budget, but then we were in real big debt." An administrator from Olivet described just how narrow the margin of error had been: "Folks who were here before I was used to talk about the 'death in time' principle of budgeting, where if a benefactor didn't die, you weren't going to make the budget." This exact "strategy" was described at Tusculum as well. These were institutions teetering on the brink of financial crisis. Also, of great concern to the faculty was a perceived decline in student quality and quantity. Enrollments had dropped to a level where, in the words of one admissions officer, "We weren't really in a position not to take an applicant." In the fall of 1987 when Irving McPhail assumed the presidency of LeMoyne-Owen, there were 886 students. At Olivet, enrollments had declined from a peak in the 1970s of approximately 875 to 710 by 1 9 9 1 - 1 9 9 2 . At Tusculum, the number of students living in the residential college in 1 9 8 8 - 1 9 8 9 had dwindled to around 2 0 0 . An administrator explained: "Our stated enrollment in 1 9 8 8 - 1 9 8 9 was just over 2 0 0 . In fact, in the administration prior to Dr. Knott's arrival those figures were fudged and the actual figure was more like 1 6 0 - 1 7 0 . " Some residence halls had been vacant for so long that they were literally boarded up. A few buildings on campus were condemned because of deferred maintenance. Tusculum's viability depended almost entirely on enrollments in the adult professional studies programs offered in Knoxville, T N . However, people at these colleges had grown to expect these kinds of difficulties. Indeed, an air of resignation permeated these campuses. It was expressed in the absence of collaboration between the various constituencies. Even communication between groups was rare. The presidents, Walker Walker at LeMoyne-Owen, Donald Morris at Olivet, and Earl Metzoff at Tusculum, were described by members as "powerful," "aloof," and "autocratic." At Olivet and Tusculum, faculty members and administrative staff had lost their jobs for "crossing" the president, and Morris and Metzoff were described as being adept at playing faculty off one another. A Tusculum faculty member described it as " a divide and conquer kind of thing." However, if the presidents could at times be heavy-handed, they were largely hands-off with regard to departmental curricular matters. At Olivet, 2

3

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a senior administrator recalled that President Morris encouraged and supported faculty members who developed courses that were intended to appeal to students. But any innovations occurred at the departmental or individual level. The prevailing standard was autonomy for each member. A department chair pointed out: There really wasn't a very good system of checks and balances. As a department chair, if I wanted to create a new major, or if I wanted to eliminate something from the department, I could pretty much do it free-reign and the faculty could develop just about any kind of program that they wanted.

The same arrangement was in force at LeMoyne-Owen. Faculty did have to teach in the co-op program, but other than that, as one administrator noted, "people would really work very little outside their own division." As a result, at Olivet and Tusculum, the number of majors skyrocketed. One Tusculum faculty member remarked: "We were going in every which direction. " Despite the limitations of the system, many faculty members grew to value this autonomy. Some developed courses based largely on their own interests. Others, according to one Tusculum professor, "took a free ride. They'd come in, teach the same ol' classes with the same ol' notes and then leave by two." At Olivet, faculty and staff characterized the arrangement as a "devil's bargain," which meant, "don't bother me and I won't bother you," according to one administrator. The allure of the bargain was individual autonomy, but it was purchased by forsaking cross-functional cooperation. Over time, however, various symptoms—what Schein (1985) terms "disconfirming data"—began to raise concerns. The diminution in institutional cohesion brought on by this radical departmental and individual autonomy might have been acceptable had the environment seemed stable, but the skies were getting dark and the boat was beginning to rock. People began to wonder if they should start rowing in the same direction. For faculty members, this meant reconsidering the heart of the enterprise—teaching and learning. The manifest challenge was addressing the disarray in the curriculum. At LeMoyne-Owen, an administrator described the situation in this way: "We had lost our focus, I think, a little bit. We hadn't reformed our general education program since the early 70's, so we've been almost 2 0 years with a program that was just kind of barnacled." There were also growing concerns about loose distribution requirements. A faculty member observed: "We had a very weak curriculum. It was a menu approach. Students could take drawing, ceramics, and choir and fulfill their humanities requirement. We really needed to do some changes." Increasingly, fac-

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ulty wondered whether the curriculum was doing a disservice to students. One pointed out: " I think some of that older program was really patronizing—give them a little music, give them a little of this and a little of that and hope they do all right in the world." To top it all off, Walker had scrapped one of the gems in LeMoyne-Owen's curricular crown—the teacher education program. Originally a normal school, many people saw the training of high quality schoolteachers as central to the College's mission. People were stunned by that decision and for many it became a symbol of Walker's apathy towards the institution. One faculty member suggested that Walker just "didn't want to be bothered" by the paperwork necessary to maintain the program. Similar concerns about administrative apathy emerged at Tusculum. Metzoff was seen as largely uninterested in the curriculum and, indeed, apathetic towards the residential college in general. His attention was squarely focused on building the lucrative professional studies programs. A faculty member noted, "The faculty [at the residential college] were left alone to run the academic side." Here too, the faculty were increasingly convinced that the curriculum needed revision, but they felt any such effort was futile unless the president and the board began demonstrating some interest in supporting the residential college. The curriculum at Olivet had become a nebulous galaxy of courses. Curricular initiatives proliferated unchecked as new courses were created. The flurry of activity, however, began to take its toll. As the number of majors skyrocketed, the faculty was increasingly stretched thin trying to accommodate students with various individual programs. Furthermore, the curriculum was held together by the whim of individual students. A senior administrator described the situation in the following way: We published that we had, like, 2 7 majors. But, you have to realize that even with the 2 7 majors we had, business administration had 6 concentrations, which were effectively majors. And if you really started to go through the catalog, if you [looked at] every degree outcome that was different and had to code it to put it into a computer, we had well over 1 0 0 different combinations [. . .] I think that—coupled with the fact that the college had tight resources, as we still have—called into question, at least in some people's minds, the validity of some of the programs.

Despondency grew at the institutions. The list of problems lengthened, but the mechanism for making changes seemed absent. There was no sense of direction and no reason to suppose that things might change any time soon. Some began to suspect that their institution was destined to remain mired in mediocrity. A faculty member at Olivet remarked with chagrin: "I think really it had come down to 'we're small and we care, and if that doesn't work for you then we're a year-round sports camp with financial

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aid."' It was as if each institution, like Dante's hero in the Divine Comedy, suddenly "awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost." ENDING T H E STALEMATE The situation began to deteriorate. As faculty concerns grew, and as financial pressures mounted, hostilities began to mar collégial life at Olivet and Tusculum. At Tusculum, a number of administrators were fired. One Olivet professor described the mounting anxiety on campus: "We were wounded. People had been fired and everyone thought they were next on the chopping block!" Another faculty member explained: "It was really a very paranoid situation. I never felt that [I might be fired] but a lot of faculty did— it was in the air." At LeMoyne-Owen, faculty members also were deeply concerned over the state of affairs. One department chair rather diplomatically remarked: "Sometimes what happens is that there are problems that start, and if they are not properly answered, then that creates a sort of uneasiness amongst faculty." The end result in each case was the same— mounting angst and increasing doubt about the long-term viability of the institution. It was at this point that some faculty members began to seek one another out, to discuss some remedy for the malaise, no matter how radical the surgery. The conclusion reached on each campus was the same: the president had to go. At LeMoyne-Owen, the situation was extremely difficult and sensitive. President Walker suffered from multiple sclerosis and over time had become desk-bound. No longer capable of representing the college externally, faculty and staff questioned his ability to address the mounting financial challenges. Nevertheless, as late as 1 9 8 6 , Walker had stated his intention to retire in 2 0 0 0 . For some, this was evidence enough that Walker was unwilling to put institutional interests before his own. A group of faculty members requested a meeting with several board members. It was an extremely painful moment. Despite concerns about his effectiveness, many people liked Walker and were sympathetic about his failing health. One faculty member describes the sentiment at the time: I liked him, I really did on a personal level, but he had reached a point where he couldn't function very well. He had M.S. We felt bad, we really did, but we met with people on the board and it was a long torturous kind of thing. No one liked it, but the school had to move forward. He didn't have the energy and we felt bad about it.

Once that message was delivered, the faculty was absented from the process. The move forced the board to closely scrutinize the college's status. What they found surprised and disturbed them. (The flow of information from Walker to the board had apparently stopped and board meetings

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were held infrequently.) Eventually, in a private meeting with the board, Walker agreed to step aside. Morris's demise at Olivet began when the board formed a task force charged with long-range planning. Faculty members, administrators, and several Board members served on the committee. A faculty member on that committee recalled: "We had a significant dip in enrollment. We were in debt. We could not operate the way we had been. We had to become more focused." The faculty member continued: "In the end we realized that [...] the committee had really been put together to try and get rid of the president." The final straw, however, came unexpectedly. Racial tensions had been growing on campus over several years. Black students felt that they received inadequate support from the institution. There were very few people of color on the faculty or staff. Although some attempts had been made to diversify the faculty, they had been unsuccessful. On April 2 , 1 9 9 2 , a racial incident occurred. Although there are disputes about what exactly happened, essentially two students had an argument. Eventually the argument turned ugly and friends became involved. As it happened, the friends of one were mostly White, and the friends of the other mostly Black, and a huge fight ensued. During that fight, racial epithets were used and the event immediately polarized the campus. That night several local news stations were notified and by the next morning the media circus had come to town. A faculty member described the scene: All the major networks were already here, and I got here a quarter to eight in the morning! So the big vans were set up, the big antennas were set up, cables running everywhere and they were just going into classrooms and shoving microphones in people's faces. I mean, there was no plan for controlling them or containing them or dealing with structuring it in any way. So, we were just open to anyone's interpretation and this place was just savaged by the media.

In the wake of the Rodney King beating, issues of race were placed front and center. An eruption of racial hatred at a small, progressive, liberal arts college—the first by charter to admit women and Blacks—was a journalist's dream, and a nightmare for the campus. Morris was convinced that he could address the problem himself. A faculty member who attended the event remarked: "He attempted to do this sort of open-forum healing process in the auditorium directly after the incident and allowed T V cameras in there, which was just—not a very smart thing to do." A faculty member described the mayhem that followed: He just opened the auditorium up, said "Everybody get in the auditorium, we're going to talk about this" and let the press in to film what was going on and it—it just exploded! There wasn't physical violence, but they were stand-

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Purpose

ing and swearing and pointing at each other. And in the meantime, the cameras from the area are filming this! Of course they showed this on television. And that's when Don Morris's world came crashing down real quick. Some of our students ended up on Oprah and on Sally Jesse Raphael.

The racial incident resulted in a large number of Black students withdrawing from the college, citing an unsafe environment. To some people, the debacle demonstrated how disconnected Morris had become from campus life. That blunder and Morris's inability to counter the sustained attacks on the college by the media emboldened a group of faculty members. The "devil's bargain" was at an end. "By June, faculty members, including me, took the opportunity to force some changes. We had a noconfidence vote for the president—86 percent of us [voted "no confidence"] and after graduation, the president resigned." At Tusculum, the president had been the locus of blame for some time. The faculty members had discussed a vote of no confidence in the president but, according to one member, "the faculty wasn't just quite unified enough to pull that off so we kind of backed away." By 1 9 8 8 , Tusculum's faculty was so "down and disgusted and sure the place was going into the pot" that many faculty members started to look for work elsewhere. A group of senior faculty members began meeting off campus to assess the situation. Most faculty members agreed that Metzoff had become distracted by offsite professional programs. A few began to suspect a conspiracy. A senior faculty member remarked: "Some felt that if [the professional program] had been successful the president and the board might have just let the traditional college wither. I didn't think there was any vision about what could be done with the traditional college." Unfortunately, Metzoff seemed to enjoy the unequivocal support of the board. One board member had even expressed his sentiment towards the faculty by attending a faculty meeting wearing a football helmet and carrying a baseball bat. A faculty member explained: Metzoff and the chairman of the board had formed a kind of partnership and they had manipulated things where they had turned off so many board members because of their manipulations that they quit. Well, when they quit the board, those two [selected more] "yes persons." Things got worse and worse and there were small numbers on the board by that time.

Despite this rather hopeless situation, the senior faculty decided that they were obligated to act. It was an act of desperation; two of the members of this group indicated in their interviews that they had expected to be fired for their actions. This group of seven drafted a five-page "bill of particulars" in which they outlined all of the problems facing the college. Among the issues they cited were low enrollment (fewer than 2 0 0 students 4

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in the residential college), high turnover in the administration (in nine key positions there had been thirty-nine people in ten years), and the deteriorating physical plant. They also included information they had received from an external contact who had uncovered some financial irregularities during an audit. The opportunity to act presented itself in the next full-faculty meeting. For some reason, the president and several of his close advisors had been unable to attend the meeting. This "accident" was key, because people feared Metzoff and because administrators were able to vote as faculty members. One of the seven senior faculty members stated: "That gave us a green light. We went ahead with the vote. It was quite a substantial majority. There were even people who were there from the administration who actually voted for it." The news quickly spread. Oh, it was a media special! There was Channel 11 from Johnson City and Channel 5 Bristol. They were here all over campus with their little cameras. Then there was a board of trustees member up in Kingsport who was a friend of the chair of the board who made some statement that we were going to close the college down. The board was going to close it down and that was the end of it because of this. Well, of course, he spoke totally out of line. But it got people's attention. What it turned out was that mostly the board had never heard—they didn't know any of this and so they were up in arms not so much with us but with the few members of the board who were running things because they had been kept in the dark. And so, immediately that set up a schism—a gap within the board.

For a time, the Executive Committee continued its staunch support of the president. As a stopgap measure, the board moved Metzoff out of the presidency and made him "Chancellor" and responsible for external affairs. However, by June, further investigations, and board dissatisfaction with Metzoff led to his dismissal. A senior faculty member explained: "Even with his activity as a fundraiser, he made so many boners and embarrassing mistakes that the board said 'enough is enough' and they gave him the kiss off then and there, it was quick, bingo that was it." The president was fired. Soon afterward, the Executive Committee resigned en masse. At each college, the president became a lightning rod for the anxieties and dissatisfaction of the faculty and staff. He both symbolized and endorsed the current, dysfunctional institutional arrangement. Faculty desperation led them to approach the board and to seek its assistance. Ultimately, the status quo was found wanting and the president was removed.

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CHANGE

If the departure of the president was the death knell of the past institutional arrangement, what might come next was uncertain. In fact, during the following year, Olivet experienced something of a setback. The interim president further polarized the campus. In an effort to clean house, a faculty member recalled that the president "fired both deans—the dean of students and the academic dean, but she did it like a day before Christmas. The timing was like something out of Dickens and it was really horrible." The president's desire to get to the bottom of the racial tensions led to some heavyhanded measures. A new member of the president's staff began "monitoring" the campus climate. One faculty member noted: He was so antagonistic towards European-American faculty that, I mean, there were people sitting in classrooms. If you said anything that in any way this person found offensive, you were brought up on charges of harassing African-Americans. I mean it really had a chilling effect on campus. And that made that year terrible because people really felt now our academic freedom is really getting stomped on because we couldn't even have open conversations

Morale plummeted. Another faculty member recalled: "We went from feeling badly [. . .] about what happened in '92 to feeling defensive and angry about that. It was a big step backwards." However, with all its uncertainties, it was during the interim year that people at the three colleges began to establish a mandate for change. Central to this process were the presidential searches. At Olivet and Tusculum in particular, these searches were characterized as "very open" and as having helped "mend fences." Faculty members began actually dealing directly with board members. At Tusculum, the bridge building extended to important external constituents as well, as one faculty member pointed out: I took encouragement from another element of the search committee, the local community. It was the first time I had really seen them take an active interest in the welfare of the school. I thought from a melding together of those elements that an opportunity was being fashioned.

The searches provided a venue for people to express their concerns and to voice their ideas about the institution's future. For some, it was the first time in years that they had felt free to express their opinions openly. Although no specific plans were formulated, what did emerge out of these conversations was a consensus that change was necessary. The institutions had, in the words of one Olivet faculty member, been "floundering" for too

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long. The time was ripe for charting a new course. What these institutions needed was a change agent, someone with the interests, values, and skills to help rebuild the institution. In his meetings with the LeMoyne-Owen board, one candidate, Dr. Irving McPhail, made it clear that if he were hired he would reclaim the institution's identity as an elite, Black, liberal arts college. Young, smart, and committed to bringing " a fresh liberal arts vigor" to the college, McPhail impressed the committee with his bold, even brash, brand of optimism, recalled one administrator. Indeed, McPhail seemed to embody academic excellence. A faculty member described him as an "Ivy league educated, hard-driving educator from New York City." His academic credentials from Cornell, Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania were impressive. Further, his experience spearheading curricular reform, as Academic Vice President at Delaware State College, suggested that he had the ability to persevere. The Olivet Board also was looking for an innovator—someone willing to try something bold, something different. When Dr. Michael Bassis arrived on campus as a candidate, he told the assembled faculty that the institution's difficult situation required sweeping reform. One professor remembered the meeting, and walked away very impressed: The thing that really pushed me towards Michael immediately was he was so honest about wanting a total change here. I remember him—what really stands out in my mind, and it puts it all in a nutshell, is he stood in the auditorium and he said "If you want incremental change, don't hire me." This was during the search process!

Another faculty member concurred: "Bassis was clear during the search. He said Ί don't want to come here and just tweak this and fine-tune that.'" Bassis was unmistakably a change-agent candidate. His professional experiences seem to have prepared him for this role. He had served as Alan Guskin's Provost during the reformation of Antioch. One administrator recollected: " H e had been at Antioch. I don't think some of the other people knew what that meant, but I did." The data suggest they did know, and people hoped that Bassis might bring some of the same creativity and entrepreneurial energy to Olivet. Antioch represented in the minds of some an ideal model for Olivet—a struggling, progressive school that had turned itself around. First impressions of Dr. Robert Knott at Tusculum paint a complex portrait. Knott was a rare mixture of qualities: a pragmatist and a visionary; a competent executive and a former pastor; an uncommon intellect with a common touch. One senior faculty member described his introduction to Knott.

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My first memory of Dr. Knott was when he met the search committee up at Johnson City. He had come to the search late and I wondered what North Carolina was sending us! Well, I was impressed. I found him impressive because of his grasp of the nuts and bolts of small colleges, plus I saw the glimmerings of a lot of intellectual depth in connection with the liberal arts in him.

Knott had risen through the ranks of small colleges becoming a tenured faculty member in philosophy, department chair, and, finally, academic dean at Catawba College, a small, Christian, liberal arts institution in nearby North Carolina. Knott had not forgotten his faculty roots and a central tenet of his was that the faculty, and specifically the senior faculty, bore the responsibility for leading curricular reform. The faculty gravitated to Knott and very quickly embraced him as one of their own. A faculty member remarked, " I remember feeling like it was divine providence that he came in at the last minute." The presidential search was an important means of bringing various constituencies together. In describing what kind of president they wanted, people arrived at a consensus that change was needed, and a change-agent ought to be hired. Board members selected McPhail, Bassis, and Knott because of skills they had demonstrated, and because of what they symbolized. They also selected these leaders because they represented the antitheses of their predecessors. In selecting these candidates, people took a first step in charting the future course of the institution. TOWARD A COMMON

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No change was possible without the participation and support of a variety of people. To that end, each president structured multiple opportunities for contemplation and disputation. These conversations served several purposes: 1. They were a way for people to openly express their values, ideals, and priorities regarding the institution. For some, this was cathartic. It also aided in bridge-building between fractured constituencies. As one LeMoyne-Owen administrator stated: "Prior to this, people would really work very little outside their own division and one of the things we wanted to do very much was to get people in different divisions talking to each other about intellectual things—and it worked!" 2 . The meetings enabled the various constituencies to begin to identify one another. For example, the president was able to identify the "true believers"—those faculty and staff members who were absolutely committed to the cause.

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3. The debates that ensued helped proponents of change (including the president) determine the level of support enjoyed by various ideas. At LeMoyne-Owen, McPhail appointed a large steering committee of faculty and administrators to work with him on a comprehensive strategic planning process. That large committee then spawned a series of smaller committees, which engaged in planning for various areas of institutional life. There were multiple opportunities for people to be involved, however McPhail was intimately involved in the process—making appointments to committees, reviewing their work, and generally overseeing the effort. The conversations at Olivet began with discussions of the College's purpose. One member described the drama of Michael Bassis's first few weeks on campus: When Michael came to campus [...] at the very first meeting that he had with faculty he said "I want you to answer a basic question for me. Why should any student with a range of opportunities and options that students have nowadays, why should any student choose Olivet College?" And we talked about being a small, caring community. And [he said] "That's the extent of the uniqueness and distinctiveness of Olivet College?" Michael said: "That's not good enough!" Well, you know, that made some people happy and others not very happy.

Faculty and staff members began to see the depth of the change that Bassis was envisioning. Bassis responded by creating more opportunities for discussion and debate, trusting that the efficacy of an institutional transformation would win out. Throughout Bassis remained adamant that the new vision had to come from the faculty, not from him. One faculty member recalled: There were full faculty meetings, faculty retreats—he immediately set up faculty retreats—you know he met with staff, he met with a lot of people on campus, both formally and informally. He had people over to his house, he had groups of people sit and talk about what they felt and how they felt. Really, he said, I'm not going to tell you what this institution should be, that's your job.

Knott spent a great deal of time thoughtfully reflecting on circumstances. He noted: "The whole first year was spent gathering background information, reading about the history of the college, reading about developments in higher education—all of those things." However, when he arrived on campus in the summer of 1 9 8 9 , he knew the institution had to act fast. Knott called a meeting of the faculty and a faculty member described how Knott framed the challenge ahead.

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He said: "The South is full of small liberal arts colleges. If that's all we aspire to that's not much justification for our continued existence. We may as well close the place and you can get jobs at institutions that are stronger and better positioned to serve your professional needs. But, there is a need for something that we used to be. In looking at the goals and statements in the founding documents of Tusculum what I see are two strong values. One is the civic republican ideal—promoting citizenship. The other is our Judeo-Christian heritage. We could intentionally reclaim those."

Knott was absolutely clear that the faculty needed to lead the effort; he could only "point the way." He then began inviting faculty to informal conversations on the side porch of the president's house. These "side porch meetings" (as they came to be called) were a primary arena of debate and discussion. During those meetings, the President began to introduce the concept of civic education. Knott recalled: We read the founders of Tusculum College and how they drew on the writings of Cicero and spoke to the early, the very early stages of the United States as a nation, because we were born when Washington was still in office as president. And that energized the movement towards the Civic Arts.

A senior faculty member observed that at times the conversations became quite spirited. The side porch meetings went on all through [the first] summer and into that autumn and it really created a sense of community. There was lot of disagreement there too—I mean [one faculty member] and I jumped each other's cases there one day. [...] I made my passionate case and she made her passionate case in rejecting what I said and she and I knocked a piece or two off of each other.

Civic education, as a sense of purpose, began to resonate with people. They knew that many of the students valued practical experience. The Civic Arts would allow students to practice their academic skills in the context of the "real world." Faculty members began to stretch their imaginations, to envision what an education might look like that truly embraced the Civic Arts ideal. One faculty member described a small group attending a conference on "interdisciplinary approaches" at Colorado College. However, what intrigued the faculty members most was the College's block calendar in which students take one intensive course at a time for 3 M weeks for 8 blocks a year. We came back from that [session] and [the other two faculty members] were sitting on the front porch of this bed and breakfast just before we left Colorado Springs. The suggestion came up, wouldn't it be something if we

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could have a block calendar? At that point I said, "I'm going to bed." I didn't think they were serious! We came back and told [President] Knott what we thought—we gotta have a core curriculum and a block calendar.

Over time, as people grappled with various aspects of the Civic Arts initiative, a block schedule increasingly emerged as a possible solution and support for it grew. Over time, more and more often, problems would arise and we'd think, " H o w are we going to do this? That calendar would allow us to do it!" And, eventually it surfaced—this is a good means to deliver the mission and curriculum that we want to deal with.

The block plan required a complete change of the calendar, and a redesign of every course taught at the college. It was a bold departure and one that Knott had misgivings about. Dr. Knott said "If you vote for this, you need to understand that once we commit to this we're not going to back out of it four months later—this is going to be it. We're not going back on it, and that's the end of it and we're going to go for it and we're going to do it."

But the faculty was committed and the opportunity to do something bold had captured their imagination. We got a clean road ahead of us and. . . let's take some chances, let's be creative, let's shoot for the stars if you will and all that and everything and be reasonable and be prudent at the same time—not just blind optimism but— and then we got down to the nitty-gritty. We all circled 'round, we had a big room and we all circled round and we took a look—it was a hand vote. Do you want to do this or not? And it was unanimous—everybody.

Before desegregation, LeMoyne-Owen served as the pinnacle of learning for the Black community in Memphis. It attracted valedictorians from nearly all of the area's Black high schools. Many of its alumni became important civic and business leaders. The College also trained the vast majority of Black schoolteachers in Memphis. McPhail made it clear that he intended to reclaim both those legacies. Early on, McPhail advocated the creation of a new, rigorous general education curriculum. He championed the creation of an honors program and the resurrection of the teacher preparation program. McPhail also wanted to reinvigorate the traditionally close relationship that the College had with the Memphis community and recover its role as the cultural center of the local Black community.

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Bassis decided to identify a clear institutional purpose by charging a "Vision Commission" with summarizing the various themes that had emerged from various discussions and presenting them as a coherent whole. Bassis provided the Commission with certain guidelines. A faculty member who served on the Commission stated: "Michael told us things like: 'The College has to develop a new vision that's in line with the heritage of the school.' He was sort of guiding us, you know, he wasn't going to [. . .] let us become a truck-driving institute or a military academy that only allowed women." Another member of the faculty noted: It was a large committee made up primarily of faculty with some staff and administration. They met regularly and then they—members would go off and talk to assigned segments of the faculty so that they could understand the dialogue and what was going on and they came up with the idea of Education for Individual and Social Responsibility.

The idea was viewed as legitimate by many of the faculty because it was so closely tied to the College's history. One administrator explained: "The institutional heritage is the ground, the fertile ground that this whole thing grows out of in the first place! We've always had diversity on campus and focused on it because we were the first educational institution by charter to allow women and Blacks." Out of these conversations emerged the visions that guided the ensuing organizational change efforts. The founding purposes were exhumed and reinterpreted to reflect the ideals of the current institutional members. Thus, LeMoyne-Owen, which had been founded by a missionary who came to the South to teach freed slaves how to read and write, took the theme of racial uplift and translated it into "A Beacon of Hope." Olivet, which had been founded by abolitionists, took the themes of inclusiveness and social justice and articulated them as "Education for Individual and Social Responsibility." Finally, Tusculum, named for Cicero's academy in ancient Greece and founded to promote the civic virtues, committed itself to practicing and preaching "the Civic Arts." I M P L E M E N T I N G T H E VISION The early efforts to promote the newly articulated vision generated a great deal of excitement at each of these three institutions. There appeared to be a fair amount of consensus about the vision, and statements of purpose were endorsed by key constituencies—the administration, faculty, and the board. As indicated above, at Tusculum, the vision of the Civic Arts and the mechanisms for delivering it (e.g., focused calendar, core curriculum) were

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so intimately connected that faculty members voted on them as a package. Knott, recalling that vote, quipped: I kidded them. I said Pd worked with faculty for 30 years; Pve never had a unanimous vote on anything. I came out of the faculty and we often define ourselves as people who think otherwise. I think to a degree some of the unanimity was from lack of full knowledge of what it would mean, which we could not have known at that point.

At LeMoyne-Owen, the new strategic plan outlined the vision for the college and gave specific directions. The plan adhered closely to McPhail's original vision and McPhail himself was closely linked to its creation. He sat down during that summer, Pm told, and drafted the five-year strategic plan. But before he did that, he had minds in the room that guided his thought. And so, his was the pen, but he had behind him the thrust of the thinking of the college.

Walker's unpopular co-op program would be dismantled and replaced with a new core curriculum infused with Afrocentric ideas. A faculty member explained: "[McPhail's] objective was to have an infusion of African and African-American content across the curriculum because we recognized that this was something that had been traditionally left out and we wanted our students to have a relevant education." McPhail also announced the resurrection of the teacher education program. Once again, LeMoyne-Owen would reclaim its role in the community by providing high quality teachers for the Memphis schools. McPhail also realized that many of LeMoyne-Owen's students needed remedial help. Therefore, a new student learning center would be instituted to serve as a resource for students. Finally, a special program was created to serve truly talented students. A faculty member explained: Probably the easiest way to summarize McPhail's vision is that he initiated this program called the DuBois scholars and that was to be a scholarship program—his goal was to have a minimum of 10 percent of the student body in the DuBois scholars program and to have that group there to kind of set the tone and draw the student body to that kind of liberal arts vision. I think that was more than anything else what really drove him.

At Olivet, it was the ratification in the spring of 1994 of the "vision statement" describing Education for Individual and Social Responsibility that set a clear direction. However, in contrast to Tusculum, there was no immediate consensus about how to realize the vision. The faculty began to discuss the kinds of competencies students ought to be able to demonstrate

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by graduation. "It turned out to be a list of sixteen items and really it was everything from health and physical awareness to the ability to read at a college level." Part of the challenge was setting priorities. "It turned out that every department, every program wanted their content on the list!" It became clear that implementing any plan would require overhauling the general education curriculum. Bassis then asked the faculty for specific plans describing how the vision could be realized. People were invited to suggest how this is going to be delivered—a structure for how these educational outcomes are going to be delivered. We just kept working right through the summer. Michael kept saying "We don't have the time to just take the summer off."

Near the end of the summer of 1 9 9 4 , four groups of faculty members brought forward plans to the faculty. These were presented at the summer retreat. " I believe [one] was by math and computer science which really was marching us in the other direction. It was a real reactionary plan. More empowering departments, more department focus, less of this touchy-feely vision thing... you know that very traditional, conservative take." A second plan also was viewed as largely upholding the status quo. A third plan recommended adopting a block calendar—having students take one intensive course at a time for three and a half weeks. The fourth plan centered on the idea of assessing students through portfolios. Faculty members were invited to walk around and write comments on the plans. "We put it up on the wall, and then people could go by and make comments with post-its, and we had little stars, you know, if you like this concept with these components. It was really messy. But the whole thing was messy." No plan received a majority of votes. Finally, at the picnic following the retreat, Bassis approached the spokespersons for each plan. One of the faculty members at that meeting recalled: "Michael said, 'Come in my back room.' I had company at my house. You know I was planning on going to the picnic and coming home. I didn't get home until 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, something like that. And it was bare knuckles backroom dialogue there." A kind of compromise emerged. The calendar would change so that Wednesday would be dedicated to portfolio meetings. All students would be required to participate. In a nod to the block plan, an intensive term would be taught at the last month of each year to allow courses to explore material in-depth. A proponent of one of the plans described what occurred next: Finally, Michael goes up to the easel and he starts drawing a picture. He says, this is what I hear you saying. And we looked and we go, that's it! It was a schematic. And everybody, everybody said, that's it, see. And well, what'll we call it? I said, why don't we call it the Olivet Plan?

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The faculty endorsed the plan and task groups were set up to begin working on the various elements. By this point, a great deal of progress was being made towards institutional renewal. By all accounts, these were Herculean labors. Many people contributed their time and talent to re-designing courses, and to drafting, articulating and presenting curricular and policy proposals to the relevant college committees—there were myriad tasks. Finally, specific structures were developed that were dedicated to the change effort. At LeMoyneOwen, committees with representation from several divisions advanced the effort. Olivet and Tusculum formed parallel committee structures to deal specifically with the change agenda. As momentum grew, the numbers of supporters grew. These efforts solidified the coalition that supported the new institutional purpose and gave proponents hope that success could be achieved. 6. Struggles over ideology: True believers and naysayers People's accounts suggest that support for the new vision grew over time. Initially, a core group performed much of the work. Within this core was a small group of "true believers"—those who were absolutely committed to the change effort and the new ideals expressed in the vision. There was a slightly larger group of change supporters—people who viewed change as an imperative, often for pragmatic reasons. "We knew we couldn't keep going the way we had been." Outside this core were a large group of fencesitters, people who felt, on balance, that change was probably necessary but who were neither eager to be involved nor sure of their roles. A department chair at Olivet recalled: There were some that stood back and waited to be asked. I don't know if people resisted because we'd been through so much or if they were waiting to be asked. There is a certain group of faculty here that feel like they need to have a personal invitation to do something and instead of volunteering or indicating an interest to get involved in one of the components of it.

And, finally, there were naysayers. People who began to either passively (by refusing to serve on committees) or actively (by arguing and voting against proposals in faculty meetings) opposed the effort. At LeMoyne-Owen there were relatively few active naysayers. "There might have been some who objected but not noticeably." However, serious debate did emerge around particular proposals. One such debate occurred over whether to include a personal finance course in the core. A faculty member who supported the plan said:

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There was an overemphasis in the humanities. I mean, in fact, we felt there should be some element of education in economics, which is vital to our everyday life. So economics was ignored at that time.

But others viewed the proposal as emphasizing personal finance over pure economics. In their view, this ran counter to the vision of reclaiming the liberal arts. The pragmatism of personal finance seemed to run counter to that ideal. I wondered, do they teach students at Harvard personal business finance? [. . .] It goes back to DuBois and Booker T. Washington— I mean, that goes way back. Do we totally focus on the elite that DuBois talked about or do we help people function where they are in society, Washington's idea? Booker T. Washington's idea was that you have to teach them to brush their teeth and do some work first.

A number of people were uncomfortable with the changes. It was a significant disruption in their lives. "Everybody was out of their comfort zone, everybody has to interact with everybody else to do the interdisciplinary work—all that is, for academics, it's painful. Especially when you've been rolling along and feeling fine about the courses you've been teaching." And a few questioned the efficacy of introducing Afrocentric ideas throughout the curriculum. One senior professor explained: If someone's teaching a course on differential equations, whether the student learns those techniques or not does not depend upon the culture the individual is coming from. He or she needs to know how to solve that equation. Afrocentric efforts may introduce the idea that this concept was invented in such and such a land. But other than that I don't see much embodiment of those kinds of thoughts in the sciences.

At Tusculum, pragmatic concerns also seemed to quell dissent. There were relatively few naysayers. Most concluded that the change was necessary for survival. After the "historic unanimous vote," change seemed inevitable. Yet, as the work unfolded, people began to understand the task they had assumed. "It started happening in private, people saying 'What have we gotten into?'" Some naysaying was passive. Some simply refused to participate in the change effort. In other cases, people resisted specific proposals. Particularly contentious were the debates over the competency system that was devised in the second year of the change effort. Students would demonstrate competency in a number of areas. In order to do so, they had to submit artifacts (e.g., a paper from a course, a piece of artwork, a description of a completed project) and a description of how it fulfilled the specific competency. A separate faculty committee was established to

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review these artifacts. Some argued that this constituted a parallel assessment—a kind of academic "double jeopardy." After all, if a faculty member had given a student an A on a paper on moral philosophy, what business was it of the committee to judge whether the paper demonstrated "self-knowledge? " The membership of the various groups shifted as the process continued. Generally speaking, the number of "true believers"—people who actively voiced their support for the vision—began to grow. The number of fence sitters declined as it became increasingly clear that change was inevitable. More and more people began to support the change effort, or at least decided they wanted to participate and have a say in what changes were made. But some did resist the changes. The reasons for this opposition (both passive and active) were relatively clear. Many members of the "old guard" interpreted the call to change as an implicit condemnation of a lifetime of effort on their part. This sentiment was described by one Olivet administrator: "All of a sudden, a lot of the people who had been here for years began saying: 'Wasn't what we had good enough?'" Other naysayers were concerned about turf. The new interdisciplinary approach made many uneasy. It meant abandoning the familiar "medieval collection of departments" which they had controlled with absolute autonomy. Some of the faculty members were simply unable to imagine an interdisciplinary curriculum. A Tusculum faculty member reasoned: " I think it was tradition... Some people were discipline bound." Another concurred. If you are the sort of person, and lots of people are, who goes into the academy who have been raised on notions of academic freedom and academic autonomy, you might find Tusculum challenging. You might! I don't think you'd find it inimical necessarily, but the whole notion of caring what goes on in other people's classrooms—not in a nosy way but because it matters to what you do in yours—that's really different from my experience in other schools.

Over time, the number of opponents began to dwindle. In part, it became evident that change was moving forward and, as one administrator explained, "people didn't want to be left out of the party." However, there were also specific strategies used by change proponents to bring people on board. The most widely used strategy, and an effective one, was simply giving people a voice and a role in the change effort. This was done by inviting people to join committees. Often the committees had discrete tasks, so faculty members interested in shaping a particular course or policy could focus their energies. At the beginning of the change effort there was nearly endless debate. Virtually any idea was entertained. Participation, then,

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meant potentially shaping the outcome of the change effort. In addition, the parallel structures created to spearhead the change efforts, to some degree, shielded proponents. It gave them time and space to incubate their ideas and construct their arguments before bringing them to the entire faculty. The presidents especially were instrumental in enticing fence sitters (particularly influential ones) to join. In some instances, fence sitters were tapped for leadership roles on key committees. At Olivet, one influential naysayer, described by one member as "kind of a thorn in everyone's side," was approached by Bassis to lead part of the effort. Accounts like these have the tenor of conversion stories. Converts were also attracted from the outside as new faculty members were hired to fulfill the vision. An Olivet faculty member noted: I left a position at Michigan State University to take this position here. It wasn't a tenured track position, although once I left they said, "wait, wait, we'll make it a tenured track position." I said, "no, this is more exciting what's going on down there."

A Tusculum faculty member recounted a similar story: Why did I come? Really, there was one driving force and that was the possibility of evolving a curriculum that would focus on citizenship and that was something that was very much of interest to me.

Such efforts at encouraging involvement were important to supporters of the new vision. When describing the process, people used terms like "inclusive," "collaborative," and "open." Indeed, there were many avenues for involvement. This sense of inclusiveness legitimized the effort in the minds of many. To summarize, over time, these processes developed a constituency strong enough to advance the new vision. There were also naysayers—people who opposed the changes and were agnostic towards the new mission. However, this group dwindled over time in part because of the specific strategies used by the proponents of the vision. In some cases, people were "converted" to the cause, often through their involvement in the change process. The president played a key role in engaging influential fence sitters. New faculty members also joined the effort. T H E D A R K SIDE O F C H A N G E

Institutional renewal is a consummate act of creativity. It entails the husbanding and growth of new ideas—the release of previously unimaginable energy. However, change incurs a cost. To select a particular direction

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means abandoning other paths and parting from fellow travelers. So much work had been done, so many discussions had occurred. Eventually, debate shut down. McPhail had decided that LeMoyne-Owen would be an elite liberal arts institution. There was no further discussion of whether Olivet would promote "Education for Individual and Social Responsibility." Tusculum had, for better or worse, married itself to the idea of the "Civic Arts." Once that ideal was firmly established in the minds of the change proponents, it was a short step to viewing naysayers as the enemy. Naysayers were viewed differently depending upon their willingness to participate in the process. For those who did, there was a fair amount of leeway, at least initially. But those who attempted to derail the process faced a rude shock. A Tusculum administrator characterized the opposition in this way: The naysayers, I think, fell into two groups. There were a small number of people who were resistant to change of any sort and for the most part they left shortly thereafter. A few of those were a little bit messy because they stayed on with their naysaying longer than they should have until it became a more forced situation. Others could see that "well, there's considerable change coming, Pm not comfortable with it, I'm going to go somewhere where I can keep doing the same things I've always done." . . . The other kind [of naysayer] is the better kind—the loyal opposition in the sense that they were committed to the mission but saying "I'm not sure this is the way we should go about doing it."

At Olivet, Bassis spoke to the naysaying contingent at faculty meetings stating that the changes were moving through, that everyone had had an opportunity for input, and that "if anyone wasn't happy, there are 3,500 other institutions in the United States and one of them must be a better fit." Hence, over time the carrots, represented by invitations for involvement, were replaced by sticks. Some faculty members remained agnostic about the new vision and were cynical about the change effort, what one faculty proponent described as a "we've seen this before kind of attitude." The naysayers felt the vision was all style and no substance, a P R . ploy. Some resented the move to reduce the power of the departments. Finally, a small group of these opponents began to actively threaten the effort. At Olivet the resistance was particularly strong. And at both Olivet and Tusculum, some naysayers lost their jobs. A faculty member at Olivet recalled: There are two people I know that were outright forced out. There were some other people for whom things were made so uncomfortable that they chose to leave. They were also opposed to the change. I would say that they were opposed, not necessarily to the Plan or the whole nature of it, but that there

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were parts of it or aspects of it. Or the way that it was being implemented or that it was going too fast. And they were outspoken about it.

To some, this smacked of witch-hunting. "As people left you could see other people rising up on the list. In fact, my office mate kind of got on the, you know, the bad list. And as other people left she said 'oh man, I'm exposed now.'" While Bassis was at Olivet, there seems to have been a degree of tolerance for debate and naysaying. Bassis had proclaimed at the beginning of the process, " N o one will lose their jobs because of the Olivet Plan." One member of the faculty senate recalled some of Bassis's frustrations with naysayers. In the meetings there were what I came to call the eight votes. There were always eight no votes... The president came out, he was just furious. "That should have been by acclamation! Why wasn't that 1 0 0 percent?" And I looked at him and said: "You don't want 1 0 0 percent votes." "Why not?" I said: "If it goes belly-up you need at least one no vote so that everybody can say they voted n o . " I said, "Don't worry about it." So we developed the idea of critical mass.

However, in the fifth year of the change effort at Olivet, Michael Bassis announced his resignation. Many had hoped he would stay since the board had recently given him a five-year contract. However, Bassis felt that a new infusion of energy was needed. The interim president who followed Bassis, in an effort to solidify support for the Olivet Plan, began to strong-arm faculty members. He approached the committee responsible for evaluating faculty. A member of the committee recollected: They didn't come out and name names but they wanted us to evaluate people based on the Plan and their contributions to the Plan. And we felt that until we get this darned new faculty handbook we're bound by the old handbook. We can't invent new ways to evaluate people.

Some faculty members remember being called in and asked whether they had voted against a particular proposal. At LeMoyne-Owen, the naysaying came from an unexpected quarter and in an unexpected way. In the third year, McPhail, trying to escape the tight financial constraints that had hindered innovation, requested the board's permission to abolish athletics and use the savings to support more honors scholarships and further work on the curriculum. Among the faculty, some were supportive of this bold move. Others privately questioned the decision. Athletics were an important link with the community. Further, a few LeMoyne-Owen students had gone on to careers in the NBA. Coach

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Jerry Johnson was an institution unto himself. "The winningest coach in the division." Finally, the board refused to approve the plan. The following day McPhail tendered his resignation, cleaned out his office, and left the college forever. What these events underscore is commitment to the vision came at a cost. Some paid the ultimate professional price. DISCOVERING Y O U ' V E ARRIVED: SYMBOLS O F SUCCESS

Over time, change came to be seen as inevitable, and this sense of inevitability was buttressed by various kinds of "evidence" of success. A number of criteria suggested these institutions accomplished a great deal. They had avoided what seemed to be impending fiscal disaster. All three institutions were financially stronger. Olivet and Tusculum erased their million-dollar operating deficits. The endowments at all three institutions began to grow; development efforts were put in place; and the base of donors expanded. Tusculum successfully completed the largest capital campaign in its history. Olivet undertook a two-stage campaign that overreached the target suggested by consultants and completed the first stage earlier than expected. At LeMoyne-Owen, McPhail began conversations with the board about a campaign. New building projects were taken on, and deferred maintenance began to be addressed. At Tusculum, once-condemned buildings were refurbished and put to use. The institutions had successfully competed for grant monies for new initiatives associated with the change effort. Turnover in the boards of Olivet and Tusculum brought new energy. Knott managed to nearly double the size of Tusculum's board. A large percentage of alumni were brought on board, and clear expectations were set in terms of financial support of the college. Perhaps most important from a financial perspective, enrollments were much healthier. At Olivet and Tusculum enrollments grew during the change years. At LeMoyne-Owen, while the overall numbers of students declined from the Walker years, so did the tremendous attrition. The students who came were more likely to stay, creating a more stable environment. Despite these gains, the data reveal that people's conceptions of success are greatly influenced by symbols, more so than by objective criteria. Institutional progress is expressed through stories or with "evidence" that is largely anecdotal. These accounts attest to the power of the process in rebuilding relationships between institutional members. At Tusculum, for example, one well-known story illustrates the end of balkanization on campus. "Surely to goodness you've heard the great campus story about the three professors who hadn't spoken to each other in something like 2 0 years [...] and that the process helped to heal that silence?" Other symbols of success included external validation: A LeMoyne-Owen administrator boasted: "We've joined national networks and involved ourselves in some

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national movements that have helped to enhance what we were doing... [These] helped place us, I think, in a national setting but it also gave us a sense of validity." Some symbols of success were facts invested with rich meaning. Thus, the presence of "Ivy League educated faculty members" at Olivet highlighted the increased desirability of the institution. REACHING T H E E N D O F T H E LIFE C Y C L E O F C H A N G E

Change efforts follow a lifecycle (Schein 1985); new things are attempted, great effort is expended; but eventually, and perhaps inevitably, the momentum slows. The life cycle of change seems to have been brought about by a number of factors. One factor seems to have been people's exhaustion. One professor at Olivet commented: "It was really just a double job—it's like repairing an airplane in flight. You have to keep the thing flying but you have to do this stuff or it's going to crash." There is no question that these efforts required extraordinary effort. People were spending hours of additional time in meetings, drafting syllabi of new courses, and attending faculty meetings to decide the fate of various policy initiatives. Eventually, the institutions began to adjust the workload. At Tusculum, this meant restructuring committees. A second factor is that, over time, the exuberance of idealism is tempered by pragmatism. At LeMoyne-Owen, for example, the redesigned core was modified. A faculty member at Olivet noted. We can only do so much and we had five years of tinkering and dreaming and thinking and adding things on and we have to realize the we can't do this forever and that we can't perhaps do everything we'd like to do... we're going to have to start making some choices about what we can do well and perhaps jettison some things.

To "true believers," such changes are a capitulation. When the Olivet faculty refused to strengthen its portfolio requirements, one faculty member remarked: We really needed to do some work around putting more teeth in this first level of portfolio evaluation called the sophomore validation process. And we created a proposal and thought that we had people pretty much on board with it. And when we finally took it to the faculty for a vote it was really awful. The discussion was horrible.

Another critically important moment occurred when the change agent president decided to leave. There is some evidence that opponents of change used this time of transition to modify the changes. After McPhail

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left, the new core curriculum remained unchanged. However, the DuBois scholars program was ignored by his successor. At Olivet, some faculty naysayers reacted to Bassis's departure by attempting to cast the Olivet Plan as his plan. One administrator explained: I think there were a few people that had been naysayers or fence-sitters in the past that sparked up a little bit and thought wait a second, there's a chance that this might come unraveled. They didn't gather and talk about things like that but you could hear rumbling here and there, people saying "I wonder if portfolio will stay, I wonder if"—The question became, "is this Michael's plan or was it the college's plan?"

The uncertainty generated by the departure seems also to have contributed to a collective effort by proponents to secure the changes that had been made. At Olivet and Tusculum in particular, what once had been a movement to reshape the institution now transformed into an effort to consolidate gains. The change proponents—once outsiders who had forced action by the board and spurred the change process—were now in positions of influence. They suddenly found themselves conservators of a new status quo. Many of those who called for a more pragmatic or "traditional" approach to academics were new faculty members. Each of these institutions had significant turnover in the faculty. Indeed, new members were critically important to the effort early on. They became workers and later converts to the new vision. They benefited from the socializing force of actually participating in shaping and realizing the new institutional purpose. New faculty quickly became invested in the mission. A Tusculum faculty member explained it this way: Some [faculty members] refer to the golden years, which were those horrible first years when everything was falling apart. But for them, those were very special times because they developed a camaraderie that was distinctive. They came to rely heavily on each other. It's like any type of hard experience. When you come out the other side with some success, you've built relationships that are precious. Then, as we began to grow, new faculty came. Now, they were recruited because of who we were. So they didn't come in there not knowing, at least intellectually, what we were about. . . [but some] tensions developed with new faculty coming in who were more comfortable with more traditional structures.

Today, the opportunity for influencing these institutions is more limited for new faculty members. The emphasis has switched from generating change to sustaining the gains that have already been made. The orientation programs for new faculty and staff seem unable to produce the kind

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of emotional and ideological investment that is held by more-veteran members. There continues to be a revolving door: each year new faculty come in and some leave the following year—unable to integrate themselves into the unique system. New faculty members view the crisis as an artifact of institutional history. Although more-veteran members are aware of the distance that has been traveled, new members simply do not share this perspective. The accounts of the senior faculty members are tolerated like the sermons on frugality preached by parents or grandparents who lived through the Great Depression. Further, the idealism that drove the effort has found only imperfect expression in the resulting programs and policies. So, new faculty members find themselves being asked to participate in labor-intensive programs that produce equivocal results that they had no hand in creating. Some become cynical. A final factor that seems to have contributed to the end of the process is a declining sense of urgency regarding change. Today, some lip service is paid to continuing the struggle to reach the ideal. People talk of needing " a few more years" to finish the job. Overall, however, they feel their effort has succeeded. People feel a strong commitment to the institution. A faculty member at Olivet describes this sense: " I believe so much in what we're doing philosophically, it's still a labor of love and I believe what we're doing is the right thing." During the recent presidential selection process at Tusculum, one senior administrator remarked on the sense of commitment by the community. We've worked very hard, created something that we're proud of, come a long way. We're not interested in someone who's going to arrive on campus and say " O K , this program is ditched, we're completely redeveloping and starting over" I don't think anyone wants to start over!

CONCLUSION The events that unfolded at these three institutions suggest that there are important common characteristics of the change process. Each institution faced a painful and intractable situation, which eventually resulted in the departure of a president. The arrival of a new "change agent" president opened the door to new possibilities. What then followed was the construction of an institutional purpose first expressed as a vision—an ideal that summarized a unique purpose or destiny that emanated from the institution's founding purpose. Some of the proponents of change were "true believers," those who believed in the dream of creating something new and magnificent. Others were driven by more pragmatic concerns. As the ideal began to be translated into specific programs and policies changed, proponents encountered opposition. Some of the opposition was politically moti-

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vated—a desire to maintain the autonomy of academic departments—but it also represented a rejection of the expressed ideal. Over time, the change proponents were able to secure enough changes to declare success. Eventually, the opposition diminished or retreated underground. However, less overt challenges to the change continued. Other factors, including exhaustion and a growing conviction of success, resulted in a reduction of effort and a slowing of the march towards the ideal.

NOTES A comprehensive discussion of methodology can be found in Appendix A. At Olivet, faculty "tenure" refers to a system of five-year contracts. The AAUP censured Olivet for the firing of one faculty member and the faculty at Tusculum was in the process of organizing an AAUP chapter when President Metzoff was removed from office. Interestingly, Dr. Knott noted that when he arrived on campus, an influential board member advised him "To fire five or six senior faculty members who were 'troublemakers.'" He refused. 1

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CHAPTER 3

The Search for Purpose as Institutional Revitalization

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H E EVENTS T H A T TRANSPIRED AT L E M O Y N E ­ O W E N ,

Ο LI VET,

AND

Tusculum follow a time-honored pathway of change. Mounting pressures spur action, the disruption in organizational life creates opportunities for innovation, and finally the changes become embedded in the institutional fabric—unfreezing, change, and refreezing, to use the formulations of Lewin (1947) and Schein (1985). This description is useful, a kind of aerial view of events. But the framework tends to present change as an organization's unified response to negative external stimuli—organization as organism. In doing so, it overlooks both the complexities of the events and the manifold perspectives and interests that reside within organizations. Organizations are communities comprised of individuals and as communities are subj ect to the vicissitudes of humanity. What motivated a small group within each of these institutions to seek change was not financial exigency alone but a gut-level sense that the life was being strangled from the institution. It was not merely declining resources but the waning of commitment, innovation, and trust that raised concerns. It was discontent that ultimately led individual members to challenge the seemingly intractable state of affairs. Eventually, the pursuit of a more satisfying life blossomed into the formulation of a new dream, a shared vision of what the institution might become. Indeed, the change processes at LeMoyne-Owen, Olivet, and Tusculum can best be understood as socio-cultural movements—collective efforts to remake institutional life. Although secular, these movements, founded to promote a specific vision or ideal, have much in common with religious revivals. In these cases, the pursuit of institutional purpose resulted in the creation of organizational belief systems—ideologies that engendered a 49

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powerful affective response among certain members of these communities, a response maintained as much by faith as by reason. Like a revival, the phenomenon influenced these campuses in unexpected and idiosyncratic ways. Some became true believers while others remained agnostic. The movements reshaped these institutions, but they were not without cost: What was a refining fire to the faithful resulted in some skeptics being burned at the stake. Despite the extraordinary progress made at these institutions programmatically (e.g., redesigning their curricula and implementing new policies), the most salient outcome was the creation of a compelling sense of purpose, which formed the foundation of an institutional ideology—a complex and interrelated sets of beliefs that gave a sense of meaning to members of these communities. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how these movements coalesced, how the new vision was created, and to provide evidence for the existence of a new institutional ideology. All three institutions traversed a strikingly similar multi-stage pathway that eventually led to a new institutional purpose. 1. A crisis of purpose: The "institutional malaise" that provoked the search for purpose. 2. Rejection of the status quo and building the consensus for change: a clearing of the way for a new institutional "vision." 3. Arriving at a new vision: The surfacing of shared values and goals by means of the presidential search, the re-interpretation of the founding purpose and other factors. 4. Birth of a movement: The emergence of a core group of "true believers" dedicated to realizing the new vision. 5. Implementing the vision: a garnering of support for the implementation of the vision. 6. Realizing the vision and the social construction of success: The emergence of a new, coherent set of beliefs and values about institutional life. A CRISIS O F PURPOSE By the 1980s, LeMoyne-Owen, Olivet, and Tusculum were headed towards crisis. Senior administrators at Tusculum and Olivet recalled their institutions being more than a million dollars in debt. More troubling still, enrollments at the colleges had declined—a disastrous circumstance for such tuition-dependent institutions. Declining resources meant stagnant salaries, which lowered morale. The campuses had grown shabby as deferred maintenance increased. Several buildings at Tusculum were boarded up and condemned. A senior faculty member explained: "The campus was physically dying." He continued:

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You'd walk into Rankin Hall, which was housing admissions at the time, and the carpet had gaping holes in it and was ragged: The impression on a new prospective student was really pretty poor. And, so the facilities were in dreadful shape. Worse yet was faculty morale. Virtually every faculty member was looking for work elsewhere, some because they wanted to leave, others because they feared they would have to. They were committed and wanted to stay here but they were saying "Well you know I have to feed my family and this school may close."

Despite these bleak circumstances, prospects for change remained distant. Organizations are rife with mechanisms of conservation (Jonsson and Lundin 1977; Schein 1 9 8 5 ; Trice and Beyer 1993) and at these colleges, there had developed dysfunctional organizational cultures—beliefs and norms that preserved a malignant status quo. There was a stoic acceptance of fate. A senior Olivet professor explained: "We got used to being poor— we'd always been poor." Further, the long-standing presidents had proved adept at preserving their power. Faculty rarely had contact with the board and assumed the president enjoyed its unequivocal support. Faculty and staff members described the president as "distant" and "aloof" and at Olivet and Tusculum descriptors like "autocratic" and "hostile" were common. Tusculum's president fired senior administrators with alarming regularity and several faculty members described him as manipulative, adept at "playing favorites." The American Association of University Professors censured Olivet after the president fired an outspoken faculty member. A professor there recalled, "There was a lot of fear among the faculty. I mean I personally never felt threatened. I never felt my job was on the line if I crossed swords with the president or the dean but a lot of faculty did." Consultation, even communication, between the administration and the faculty grew increasingly rare. A member of Olivet's faculty senate noted: Occasionally, [the president] would ask the Senate to do something for form's sake. They would do it and it would inevitably end up on a shelf somewhere so the frustration and the cynicism was high. We were asked to do things, but then it never went anywhere.

However, there were benefits to this arrangement. First, it lent a measure of predictability and stability to institutional life. The presidents were hands-off when it came to curricular matters. Academic departments— even individual faculty members—were free to develop whatever courses they wanted, even new majors. There was also a cost: a complete absence of cross-functional cooperation. This was the trade-off several Olivet faculty members described as " a devil's bargain."

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There was a devil's bargain between the administration and the faculty. The president, who had been here at that time thirteen years, found that as long as there wasn't trouble, he could be very happy. And so he essentially told the faculty, "Listen, you do your thing, as long as we can support it financially I don't care what you d o . "

fire.

It was a social contract with all the collegiality and stability of a cease-

Over time this stalemate exacted a heavy price. Faculty dissatisfaction with the curriculum intensified. All three institutions had placed a heavy emphasis on "practical" or professional education. LeMoyne-Owen gave credits for "experience" through a co-op program. Olivet developed a host of new majors—many of them pre-professional. Tusculum's liberal artsfocused residential college had taken a back seat to the lucrative "professional studies" program held on satellite classrooms in nearby cities. None of their general education curricula had been updated in years and what remained had lost any coherence. Despite its legacy as a normal school, a rigorous and thriving teacher education program was closed down. At Olivet (then with fewer than 800 students) the number of majors grew to more than sixty—some with few or no students enrolled in them. Tusculum faculty members described a similar scattershot approach. Their concerns over the absence of academic rigor seemed to be corroborated by their growing perception that student preparedness had fallen to an alarming level. At LeMoyne-Owen heated faculty discussions broke out when a number of graduates failed to secure employment—a devastating development for an institution that prided itself on training the next generation of leaders for Memphis. A Tusculum administrator observed despondently: "At that time we had students here who were simply unprepared for college [...] and we were graduating illiterates." These troubling times provoked a range of reactions. Some faculty and staff members became bitter, even hostile. Acts of aggression, such as interdepartmental squabbles over scarce resources, increased. A Tusculum professor while describing faculty meetings at that time quipped, " I had a lot of flaming arrows shot in my butt during those years!" Other faculty members became despondent, withdrawing from the fray. They avoided committee meetings and left campus once their teaching was done. The relationship between the administration and the faculty soured, particularly at Olivet and Tusculum. An Olivet faculty member explained: "The faculty's agenda was to teach students the best way we can when we have to beware of the administration because they're interested in attacking us." Indeed, efforts to spur change were rebuffed. An administrator at Olivet recalled trying to warn the president of rising racial tensions on campus:

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A couple of us as faculty senators went directly to [the president] and said you got to listen to the students and listen to the faculty and staff that are saying we're growing as an institution and there are certain things we're going to have to do as a college.

The president demurred and the campus became increasingly Balkanized. Eventually institutional life became so unpleasant, the level of distress so acute, that some individuals concluded that without change, the institution might well be headed for ruin. Some "evidence" was tangible and apparent (e.g., peeling paint, declining enrollments, an incoherent curriculum.) But also conclusive was a gnawing, gut-level sense that the institution had lost its way. A Tusculum faculty member describing that foreboding said, "There was just this sense that the institution was being frittered away." Another likened the situation to "an institutional malaise." An Olivet faculty member summarized the situation poignantly, "We just didn't know who we were anymore." The narratives suggest that it was this purposelessness more than any other factor that eventually called forth a response. REJECTION O F T H E STATUS Q U O A N D BUILDING T H E SENSUS F O R

CON-

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The response began with a seemingly innocuous step. Individual faculty members began seeking one another out—trying to make sense of events and weighing possible responses. A Tusculum faculty member recalled: The college's situation seemed increasingly dire and actually the faculty came together more. So, some of the animosities were put aside and we realized, what is it, the old saying, "United we stand, divided we fall?" So we became united, maybe in some parts, maybe because we wanted to be, and in other parts because it became a necessity. It was interesting because some of these folks had been at each other's throats.

(Indeed, three of Tusculum's most senior faculty members had not spoken to one another in years.) These discussions led to a growing conviction that the institution was in trouble. A fuller realization of the institution's problems emerged. Perceptions of the president also began to change. (Indeed, the term "devil's bargain" is illuminating when one considers who the "devil" is in that formulation.) What once had been viewed as a "hands off" management style became evidence for incompetence or apathy or obliviousness—all interpretations suggested in the narratives. At Tusculum there were rumors of financial improprieties (which were never proven). Although the presidents were partially responsible for their institutions' cir-

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cumstances, they bore the full weight of the blame—perhaps unfairly. A former administrator from Olivet remarked: .

I don't think it was all the president's fault. You'll hear people saying that. There was really a dysfunctional relationship between the faculty and the administration. The faculty simply didn't take ownership of the academic mission.

Nevertheless, the president came to symbolize to the faculty, and later the board, the dissention, division, and absence of direction. A Tusculum faculty member quipped, "There wasn't anything to believe in other than 'preserve my administration.'" Finally, the faculty approached the trustees. They expressed their lack of confidence in their institution's future and the president. Ultimately, as a result, the presidents left or were removed— casualties of, perhaps even scapegoats for, their college's troubles. When an institution is in such a "crisis of decay," to use Clark's (1972) term, the result is often a "suspending [of] past practice" (p. 2 0 0 ) . New institutional norms developed during the subsequent presidential search processes. Cooperation between the board and faculty during the search process bridged a long-standing rift between them. One member of the search committee at Olivet commented: The board was very, very open with us, and at that point the board chair was here almost on a daily basis even though she lived in Grand Rapids and I think she played a really good role in terms of steering us out of this mess.

The process also invited people to share their concerns and criticisms. A new pattern of openness was established. One faculty member noted: By a stroke of good luck we chose this academic search group and in the process they interviewed everyone in the faculty and the administration and students to find out what is good about the school what is bad about the school, where do you want to go. It was an excellent process. It was very gratifying to see that it basically confirmed and echoed much of what the faculty had said—but this was an independent finding.

The selection process also led to the shared conviction among the trustees and some faculty members that because significant change was warranted, bold and unconventional thinking was called for. One Olivet trustee wrote an influential memo imploring the board to find an unconventional candidate, a "mad scientist" who would help the college reinvent itself. Ultimately, all three institutions selected extremely ambitious leaders. At LeMoyne-Owen, Irving McPhail challenged the college to recapture its past glory as the premier liberal arts institution for the Black community in

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Memphis. A faculty member quipped: "You want a bumper sticker for McPhail? He wanted us to be Harvard." Bassis too put the Olivet community on notice during his interview on campus: The one thing I remember clearly about the candidates—all except Michael [Bassis]—they all said we were too timid in our fundraising and we didn't ask for enough money, we didn't have our tuition high enough. It seemed like an odd response to something that was so deeply embedded here and so systemic. [...] I mean we did need more money! N o question about that but that seemed like a tiny part of the total problem.

Knott's first public act at Tusculum was to convene the faculty on July 1, 1 9 8 9 and challenge them saying: " I can point to an overall direction but the faculty must lead us in the direction." ARRIVING AT A N E W VISION The visions emerged from several distinct sources. One influence was the new president, specifically what the new president symbolized. Each one's distinct professional background was suggestive of the direction their institution needed to go next. For example, Irving McPhail's was "Ivy League Educated" and he had proven his administrative acumen by engineering curricular reform in his previous post. A LeMoyne-Owen faculty member recalled, "He had his hand on the pulse of the trends that were taking place in higher education." This seemed to presage a new emphasis on academic excellence and innovation. Michael Bassis came from Antioch. The Olivet board knew that Antioch had transformed itself while Bassis was provost. In the interviews, people pointed to Antioch and Olivet's common roots as progressive colleges founded by abolitionists. The implication was clearly that Olivet might become another Antioch. At Tusculum, Robert Knott impressed the board with his sterling academic and administrative credentials. Once a philosophy professor, he had joined the ranks of the administration and was provost of a successful Christian college in nearby North Carolina. A faculty member said: " I found him impressive because of his grasp of the nuts and bolts of small colleges plus I saw the glimmerings of a lot of intellectual depth in connection with the liberal arts in him. I thought that was real valuable." Cohen and March (1974) observe that, "The college president faces [many] ambiguities. The first is the ambiguity of purpose. What are the goals of the organization?" (p. 195). The vehicle the presidents used to address this question were large committee meetings (a viable approach given the relatively small size of these institutions.) The presidents immediately engaged the faculty in conversations—strategic planning sessions at LeMoyne-Owen, all-faculty retreats at Olivet, and "side porch meetings"

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at Tusculum (regular meetings held on the side porch of the president's house.) These conversations surfaced common concerns, shared values and allowed for the testing of new ideas. Ultimately, these discussions supplied the conceptual and ideological raw materials for what ultimately emerged as the new vision. Reclaiming the institution's history proved to be a particularly effective way of devising a distinctive identity. LeMoyne-Owen had twin purposes: to train leaders and to be a vehicle for racial uplift—to take students the faculty refer to as "diamonds in the rough" and turn them into well-educated citizens. The school was founded to teach freed slaves to read and write. Later, as a normal school, the college trained "nine tenths of all the Black schoolteachers in Memphis." For more than a century, this college had served as the elite educational institution and primary cultural resource for the Black community in Memphis. Many prominent local and even national leaders were alumni. McPhail challenged the board and the faculty and staff to reclaim that birthright. The founding purposes of Tusculum and Olivet proved equally powerful. Before arriving on campus, Knott pored over the College's founding documents. The college had been founded in the 1700s, "the first college chartered west of the mountains and the oldest college in Tennessee." Its founding occurred in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. Named for Cicero's academy in ancient Greece, it was dedicated to promoting civic education. Knott challenged the faculty to reclaim this lost heritage. A professor recalled that "galvanizing" speech: He went back to the founder's comments from in the 1700s [ ] and he said, "We have a chance to resurrect it." He talked to us about what would it mean to have a college which specifically claimed its civic republican and Christian heritage and linked them in civic education for the next generation of the state's and the nation's leaders, and citizens—precisely what the original mission was.

Bassis pointed to Olivet's founding by abolitionists—"the first college by charter to admit women and people of color"—and he emphasized the radical nature of that founding purpose—an education predicated on uncompromising principals of social justice. Bassis then formed a faculty committee (the "vision commission") and charged the group with distilling the ideas from the broad-based discussions into a statement that everyone could endorse. A member of the committee recalled: He laid out some parameters. They were things like the college has to develop a new vision that's in line with the heritage of the school. [. . .] He wasn't going to, you know, let us become a truck driving institute or a military academy that only allowed women.

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These efforts were useful because the founding purpose was considered almost universally to be legitimate. Evoking the history tied the change effort to something deeper and reinforced the sense that the institution was "special." A senior faculty member at Tusculum expressed this: "It was worth saving. It was an institution that had been around since 1794. You just don't discard it. And that sounds corny but that I think was part of my motivation." Incredibly, not a single person interviewed questioned the notion of dusting off a purpose that had been articulated a century or two ago under vastly different circumstances. Ultimately, the founding purpose provided a common set of ideals from which to work once it was re-fitted to suit contemporary circumstances. All of the above factors (e.g., presidential symbolism, broad-based conversations) informed the translation. At LeMoyne-Owen, President McPhail used the term " a Beacon of Hope" from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in order to convey the college's role as an academically elite institution and a resource for the entire Black community of Memphis. Olivet's "vision commission" drew on themes of inclusiveness and social justice and articulated them as "Education for Individual and Social Responsibility." Finally, Tusculum drew heavily from its founding purpose and expressed a desire to prepare students to become practitioners of the "Civic Arts." B I R T H O F A M O V E M E N T : T R U E BELIEVERS, SUPPORTERS, FENCE SITTERS AND NAYSAYERS All three institutions now had "mission statements" or "vision statements," pregnant with the meaning. Admittedly, on a rather abstract level a "shared sense of purpose" had been achieved. However, there was no consensus about how these visions ought to be made real. In what followed, the contentious nature of the debates, the resistance of skeptics, and the sheer volume of work necessary to enact such comprehensive reform might well have suffocated the vision in its infancy but for a small group of individuals who became absolutely committed to vision. Over time, these "true believers" were able to draw others to the cause and they were increasingly influential in the decision-making process. A kind of hierarchy developed at the institutions. First, there were the "true believers"—zealous and campaigning tirelessly for the cause. An Olivet administrator referred to this group as "the vanguard." Then, there was a slightly larger group of people who joined the "true believers" in the effort because they supported change, albeit for largely pragmatic reasons. The "supporters" agreed to serve on committees and worked with the "true believers" to advance change. Some joined the effort because of an interest in one specific element of the change agenda (e.g., the redesign of

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a particular course or the creation of a new program.) The largest group by far was the "fence sitters"—people who were ambivalent about the change effort. There were those who had become cynical about the possibility for change. Others harbored a deep distrust for the board and the new administration. Most were simply willing to wait and see before committing themselves. Finally, there were the "naysayers"—people who actively opposed the effort. A few long-standing faculty members (the "old guard") interpreted the call to change as an implicit condemnation of their life's work. An Olivet faculty member explained: "All of a sudden, a lot of the people who had been here for years began saying: 'Wasn't what we had good enough?'" Also in this group were those who took issue with particular policies, a group a Tusculum administrator referred to as "the loyal opposition." Indeed, the proposed curricular changes raised a host of turf issues. A faculty member at LeMoyne-Owen pointed to these concerns: [With the proposed core curriculum] there weren't intro courses for your majors anymore! You lost your intro courses for your majors so then "What do we do about that?" They weren't recruiting tools—I don't know what your experience has been but a lot of times in a lot of schools people teach the Gen Ed course and they're recruiting for the major.

IMPLEMENTING T H E VISION: Over time, the support for the vision grew. An administrator at Olivet described that process as follows: I saw three groups of people—those who were the naysayers, those who were the fence sitters (which was the biggest group), and the vanguard. I think we had a good-sized group of naysayers to begin with and a medium-size group of fence sitters and just a little tiny handful of vanguard. And, pretty soon the number of fence sitters started to grow because I think they were starting to see some good things happening and they were thinking, well I've got to be positioned to move in the other direction if I need to. And, pretty soon instead of having twenty of the 5 0 or 5 5 faculty as naysayers, there were only six.

A similar dynamic occurred at the other two colleges as well. Over time, the pragmatic "supporters" by participating in the change effort came to embrace the new vision and profess its efficacy (and thereby entered the ranks of the "true believers"). The "fence sitters," seeing that changes were taking place, and wanting a say in the new order, joined the effort (and thus became "supporters.") So, eventually the proponents of the new vision increased in number and gained influence. Ultimately, at each institution,

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the vast majority of individuals came to endorse the programmatic expression of the vision. What accounted for the eventually widespread "buy in?" The true believers believed the vision could be realized long before there was any evidence of success. In a real sense this group through its efforts provided the "venture capital" of the movement. They, and their faith, were key resources. They also drew others to the cause by means of several strategies. Quite pragmatically, they appealed to others by arguing for the necessity of broad-based change. "Some kind of change had to happen, so why not this particular conception?" They invited people to become active participants and allowed anyone who joined the effort to influence the process. This had a powerful effect on people. A faculty member at Olivet described her initial skepticism giving way: At first I thought, OK here we go again. And then, after I started to be a part of—actually I assisted in the development of the curriculum [. . .] so I had a very critical, very central involvement in that project. So at that point it went beyond rhetoric for me and I began to realize, oh they are very serious about this Olivet Plan.

This was accomplished in part through the establishment of parallel governance structures—the strategic planning process at LeMoyne-Owen and committees dedicated to the change effort at Olivet and Tusculum. A "fence sitter" could choose to participate on any number of levels. There were work groups charged with designing particular courses, for example. Within these structures there were multiple opportunities for leadership. Anyone participating in the change effort could argue for a particular idea: If a convincing case could be made that it advanced the institution towards the ideal, it was attempted. In a few instances, influential fence sitters were actively sought and tapped for leadership positions. An administrator at Olivet described Bassis drawing in one such person: [That person] was kind of a curmudgeon. But [Bassis] knew if he co-opted somebody who had been here for a long time and knew the institutional history and who had potential for leadership, he'd have an insider. [...] It worked! I mean, [the person] just blossomed.

As this broader (and ideologically less-homogeneous group) was drawn into the movement, the visions were to some degree amended. For example, although Tusculum's original vision was the recapturing of the civic republican and Christian values expressed in the founding purpose, the former quickly overshadowed the latter—ultimately the vision that emerged was the "civic arts." Instead, the Christian mission came to be described as a part of the civic purpose, the inculcation of "Judeo-Christian

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values." Elements of the visions changed as trial and error indicated what ideas, in fact, worked. As curricular and policy changes were implemented, the opportunities to join the movement declined. Eventually, efforts at inclusiveness gave way to obstinacy as proponents of the changes acted to protect their investment of time and effort. At Olivet, Bassis stated openly at a faculty meeting that the changes were moving forward, that those who weren't happy ought to find " a better fit." At both Olivet and Tusculum, some faculty members left as a result of the changes. In a few cases, there were doubts as to whether the departures were voluntary. "With some it had to become a more 'forced situation,'" according to a Tusculum administrator. This sent a powerful signal to those who had been openly critical. REALIZING T H E VISION A N D T H E SOCIAL C O N S T R U C T I O N

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Ultimately, these visions found expression, in part, through new programs and policies tailored to promote the new educational ideal. People also point to improvements in institutional life—restored relationships and greater cooperation. Finally, individuals see the vision validated by external groups, In an effort to prepare students for lives of leadership and service to their community, LeMoyne-Owen incorporated Afrocentric ideas into the curriculum. A new two-tiered core was devised for freshmen and sophomores. One track ensured the academically talented were challenged and the other providing remediation for those "diamonds in the rough" who needed extra assistance. The teacher education program was also resurrected and McPhail spent considerable time building strong relationships in the community. Olivet created eleven new core courses (e.g., Self and Community I and Π, Living in a Diverse World; Nature, Technology and a Diverse World) aimed at promoting "individual and social responsibility." A portfolio program was also instituted. Students must submit "artifacts" demonstrating competency in a number of areas directly related to the vision. They must pass "validation" at the end of sophomore year and before graduation. A service-learning program was also instituted as was a new multi-cultural center promoting tolerance and celebrating diversity. Tusculum's programmatic and policy changes were arguably the most sweeping. The college adopted a "focused calendar" (students take one intensive course at a time.) This gives faculty large chunks of time in which to structure community-based learning proj ects, a strategy consistent with the "civic arts" ideal. Service-learning has been incorporated throughout the curriculum and student participation is impressive. Tusculum also

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experimented with a new governance structure. For several years the college had no academic dean or provost. Instead, the faculty handled those tasks in committee, an arrangement that required a close partnership with the administration. The colleges also have reached greater fiscal stability. Olivet and Tusculum erased million-dollar debts. The endowments at all three institutions have begun to grow. New development efforts are in place and the base of donors has been expanded. Tusculum successfully completed the largest capital campaign in its history. Knott nearly double the size of Tusculum's board, increased the percentage of alumni serving on it, and set clear expectations regarding their financial support. Olivet undertook a two-stage campaign attempting to overreach the target suggested by consultants. The college completed the first stage earlier than expected and is preparing to launch the second phase. At LeMoyne-Owen, McPhail began conversations with his board about a campaign that was launched after his departure. At all three institutions, new building projects have been undertaken and deferred maintenance has begun to be addressed. The once-condemned buildings at Tusculum have been beautifully restored and a new multi-million dollar student center has been built. All three institutions have for the first time successfully competed for grants. At Olivet and Tusculum enrollments have grown and at LeMoyne-Owen, although overall numbers of students have not increased, it curtailed the previously high attrition rate, which created a more stable environment. As impressive as these tangible gains are (e.g., programmatic and fiscal improvements) even more striking is the transformation in attitudes about institutional life—there is intense satisfaction and pride in what has been accomplished. People note the restoration in previously broken relationships. There is, overall, a greater sense of community, build on a shared sense of purpose. Consider the following statements from a Tusculum and an Olivet faculty member, respectively. For me and I think for a number of other people, this process has been exhilarating and nurturing and I think it was a way to get at that sense of collegiality and shared vision that I think we have. There certainly are disagreements but I think there's also a lot of respect. It's balanced by a sense that we're all trying to get to someplace that's similar with the development of our students.

External validation is another source of pride. A LeMoyne-Owen administrator boasted: "We've joined national networks and involved ourselves in some national movements that have helped to enhance what we were doing . . . [These] helped place us, I think, in a national setting but it

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also gave us a sense of validity." An Olivet faculty member also spoke with satisfaction about the institution's improved reputation: We're the envy of a lot of other colleges and universities, places with a hell of a lot more money than us, a lot more financial resources, a lot better infrastructure, yet we're out on the leading edge of what we think higher education should be and where it's going.

Administrators, faculty, and staff also feel that the students are much better served, thanks to the changes. An Olivet professor explained: I think we've been successful because our students are a lot more sophisticated than they were when we were under the old system ten or fifteen years ago—they are just experiencing things that are a lot broader. So, in those terms I think we're successful. You know, I actually feel good about being here.

Of course, such assertions, though deeply felt, are impressionistic perceptions. Some clearly recognize this. A LeMoyne-Owen faculty member wisely remarked: I have one student, he can't write a sophisticated paper, not yet. We've got to work on that. But once they catch fire—one of the most beautiful things I know about is when a student catches fire and they come to my office and say 'Look what I found!' I know that's anecdotal. People say, 'well, that's just anecdotal' but I think teachers live by that."

MISSION CREATION AS A SOCIO-CULTURAL M O V E M E N T The events at these three colleges have much to tell us about how a shared sense of purpose forms, develops, and is finally fulfilled. The most persistent theme emerging from these accounts is that institutional purpose is something more profound than a shared "goal" or a set of operating instructions. What occurred at LeMoyne-Owen, Olivet, and Tusculum were socio-cultural movements—collective efforts to create new institutional lives, which conformed with the members' ideals and aspirations. Each effort engendered a powerful affective response and generated an outpouring of energy and an intensity of commitment that has been absent previously. In his seminal article, Anthony Wallace (1956) describes an entire class of phenomena that includes social movements, reform movements, revolutions, religious revivals, nativistic movements, and the creation of Utopian communities. Wallace terms these "revitalizations."

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A revitalization movement is defined as a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture [. . .] They must feel their cultural system is unsatisfactory; and they must innovate not merely discrete items, but a new cultural system, specifying new relationships as well as, in some cases, new traits (p. 2 6 5 ) .

Wallace argues that collective change efforts around shared ideals are common and occur in a variety of social settings and contexts: "Revitalization movements are evidently not unusual phenomena" (p. 2 6 7 ) . The central feature of any revitalization is that it is dependent upon the emergence of a vision of a new way of life. Revitalizations may be explicitly religious (e.g., revivals, messianic movements) or secular (the civic rights movement is exemplary.) In all cases, a movement's cohesiveness and power is contingent on the maintenance of shared values and a healthy dose of idealism. Social movement theorist, Mario Diani explains: "To be considered a social movement, an interacting collectivity requires a shared set of beliefs and a sense of belongingness" (Diani 1 9 9 2 , p. 8). The progression of events at the three colleges conforms to Wallace's framework (See Figure 2) and his schema is a useful tool for understanding how purpose making occurs. Wallace's revitalization framework makes clear that developing a collective sense of purpose is a complex multistage process. It begins with the articulation of an idealistic vision, which is derived from a variety of sources (e.g., discussions during the presidential search, explorations of the founding purpose.) These visions express the ideals of the community (e.g., A Beacon of Hope, Education for Individual and Social Responsibility, the Civic Arts). Each of the visions is what Harry Abravanel (1983) would call a meta-ideology, an "abstract social and analytical philosophic belief system [that is a] doctrine without a distinct action component" (p. 2 7 6 ) . The visions were disembodied ideals and they needed to be anchored in institutional life—manifestoes or declarations, with the revolution yet to come. Idealistic though they were, they expressed the sentiment of the majority and captured the imagination of a core group of "true believers." This core group supplied the energy that spurred the movement forward early on. As more people joined the cause, the initial visions were modified somewhat to accommodate the increasingly ideologically heterogeneous membership. Thus, Tusculum's Christian mission became subsumed under the Civic Arts banner. However, it is also clear that people's participation influenced them and drew them into the ranks of the "true believers." Group work has a powerful socializing effect (Schein 1 9 6 9 ; Bales 1970). Rosabeth Moss Kanter's (1972) study of Utopian communities underscores this. She identifies a number of factors that promote commitment among members. One such "commitment mechanism" is shared sacrifice. Simply

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put, when an individual contributes labor to a task, he or she becomes invested in its outcome. "The more it 'costs' a person to do something, the more 'valuable' he will consider it, in order to justify the psychic expense" (Kanter 1972 p. 76). Shared sacrifice also promotes social cohesion: The act of working together inspires camaraderie. So, at these institutions, grudges were set aside in the interest of advancing the cause. Ultimately, relationships were restored and the Balkanization on these campuses ended. Figure 2. A Comparison of Cases and the Revitalization Framework The Three Colleges 1. A crisis of purpose: External pressures promote increasing levels of anxiety. People question the long-term viability of the institution. Some become apathetic (e.g., leaving campus after they teach their classes). There is increased infighting. The administration maintains control through coercion. Balkanization results. 2. Rejecting the status quo: A group of faculty members outside of formal channels conclude that the status quo must end. The president, a symbol of the institutional malaise, is deposed. 3. The genesis of a vision: Once a mandate for change has been established, broad based discussions ensue. The concerns, ideals, and aspirations of the group are voiced. A new educational vision is articulated (e.g., Education for Individual and Social Responsibility.) 4. Birth of a Movement: A small group of "true believers" begins to work towards realizing the vision. They are aided by a (arger group of "supporters** who support change for pragmatic reasons.

S. Implementing the vision-. Over time, more people are drawn to the cause by being invited to participate in the change effort itself. Certain early ideals are altered to make them more acceptable. 6. Realizing the vision: A significant enough proportion of faculty and staff back the new vision and the resulting change efforts. New policies are enacted reflecting the vision. Highly symbolic and anecdotal "evidence" of success justifies the movement.

Wallace's Revitalization Framework Period of cultural distortion-. "The prolonged experience of stress... [leads to] extreme passivity and indolence, the development of highly ambivalent dependency relationships, intragroup violence... states of depression and self-reproach** (p. 269). "World destruction fantasies" provide fertile soil for a revitalization. Once "the 'dead' way of life is recognized as dead, interest shifts to... a new way** (p. 270) The resulting vision expresses a "longing for the establishment of an ideal state of stable and satisfying [...] relations (the restitution fantasy or Utopian content)** (p. 270). Organization: " A small clique of special disciples [...] clusters around the prophet and an embryonic campaign organization develops with three orders of personnel: the prophet, the disciples, and the followers** (p. 273) [The vision promises that] society will benefit materially from... the new cultural system" (p. 273). Adaptation: "The movement is a revolutionary organization ... [and uses] various strategies of adaptation: doctrinal modification; political and diplomatic maneuver; and force" (p. 274). Cultural transformation: "As the whole or a controlling portion of the population comes to accept the new [belief system] with its various injunction, a noticeable social revitalization occurs" (p. 275)

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Kanter also notes that commitment is generated through communal sharing. At the three colleges there are many such examples (e.g., committee work, group retreats, team teaching, participation in the portfolio program). However, perhaps the most important instance of "communal sharing" was the redesign of the curriculum. When distribution requirements were abolished in favor of a new core, the locus of control shifted from individual faculty members and departments to the faculty as a whole. The departments thereby relinquished much of their former independence in hopes that by working together, they could achieve their collective educational dream. Ultimately, this leads us to the most striking quality of these efforts to express a meaningful institutional purpose. The resulting shared missions are best understood as complex, interrelated belief systems that reflect new norms, new priorities, and are upheld with a measure of faith. They are the distillation of an entire system of beliefs that promote and sustain a more satisfying institutional life. This system is reified through highly symbolic stories, which supply the "evidence" that the vision is being fulfilled. Belief in the institutional purpose is best understood as a profession of faith—less reliant on objective measures (e.g., enrollments, financial health) and more dependent on the conviction that the effort has been successful. Ultimately, the pursuit of their vision produced, at least among a number of people, what Kantor would term a form of "transcendence" (p. 111). People derive intense personal satisfaction from what they have accomplished. Edward Shils notes that such sentiments generate "institutional charisma" (p. 113). People subsume their individual interest for a great cause. Such social systems lend meaning to members and generate feelings of self-respect. Such "institutionalized awe," Kanter argues, signals the presence of an ideological and structural system that orders and gives meaning to the individual's life, and which attaches the order and meaning to the organization" (p. 113). It is by creating a coherent ideology and a structure for its expression that a true, shared sense of purpose emerges. COMPARING BELIEF SYSTEMS: T H E N AND N O W Ideologies are a coherent set of interrelated beliefs that enlighten people's understanding of the world. A retrospective investigation of change efforts cannot determine with absolute certainty the beliefs that people held before the change. Memories are imperfect. In addition, beliefs and values are often hard to capture. Edgar Schein has even gone so far as to suggest that people will likely find it impossible to articulate the most fundamental organizational values and beliefs because they are internalized as assumptions and thus understood implicitly only (Schein 1985). 1

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While it may be fruitless to ask people " S o , what were and are the core values of your organization?" it is possible to ascertain those beliefs and values indirectly. Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn argues convincingly that a culture can be defined in any number of ways. These include understanding people's "way of thinking, feeling, and believing" and through "abstraction from [their] behavior" (In Geertz 1973 p. 4 ) . Clifford Geertz (1973) asserts "culture is public because meaning is" (p. 12). There is no mystery among members of an organization about " H o w we do things around here"—they know. What is required to get at these beliefs is to talk with them about institutional life. To analyze the belief systems at the three institutions, I reviewed the interview transcripts and found statements about institutional life (both before and after the change) that were widely shared. I then selected statements from the three thematic areas that seemed most relevant to the work of the institution and its vision. These were beliefs about: • The curriculum; • How people relate to one another; • The institution's future. I then attempted to extrapolate from the statements the core institutional belief (seen in bold in the figures.) The comparison reveals both the shifts and the individual beliefs and it also helps us understand how the belief system, or ideology, that emerged resolved some of the vexing inconsistencies that existed in the beliefs during the status quo ante. 1. Beliefs about the curriculum Prior to the change effort, all three institutions emphasized professional programs—a common enrollment-boosting strategy during the 1970s and 1980s (Breneman 1994; Delucchi 1997). (See Figure 3.) However, a potent strain of pragmatism had long informed the educational philosophy at these institutions. Faculty knew that students wanted to be credentialed and hoped to land good jobs at graduation. There was clearly a perception that academic quality had been compromised and that curriculum lacked coherence. At LeMoyne-Owen, people felt that co-operative learning had "dumbed down" the curriculum and that the "cafeteria plan" gave students too much latitude in setting their academic program. At Tusculum, faculty also derided their curriculum's "loose conglomeration" of courses. At Olivet, there were concerns that the more than sixty different programs and majors were spreading the resources of the institutions too thin. Some people also had become concerned that the primary guide for curricular decisions had become the marketability of courses.

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After the visions were implemented, however, the change in beliefs was remarkable. (See Figure 3.) Today, the academic program is seen as coherent and designed to address the institution's purpose. At LeMoyne-Owen the student competencies (the desired outcomes) and the core curriculum inform and influence one another. Further, the two-tier core (which accommodates well-prepared and less well-prepared students) enables the institution to open its door to all (access) and still train up the leaders for the next generation (elite education.) Olivet's portfolio program and the competencies at Tusculum require students to demonstrate and articulate what, exactly, they have learned. At Tusculum, the intensive coursework under the focused calendar allows students to practice the Civic Arts through community-based learning projects. 2 . Beliefs about how people relate to one another Beliefs about key relationships also seem to have undergone a transformation. (See Figure 4.) The relationship between faculty members and the president, once distant and strained, is now marked by mutual respect and even admiration. A new sense of trust has been established. The president, rather than distant despot, is viewed as a visionary, a benevolent but authoritative figure who points the way but asks the faculty to lead. Relationships among faculty members seem also to have been restored. The tribalism has been replaced by new cooperative norms. There is a clear shift from a self-centered modus operandi to an institution-centered ideal. There is also a new sense of interdependence that had not existed previously. People have given up a measure of autonomy in return for a collective effort that they believe will yield fruit. 3. Beliefs about the institution's future Finally, note the shift in beliefs about the future of the institution. (See Figure 5.) The beliefs "before" can be summed up readily: People felt the institution was stuck—at a dead end. They were skeptical about their institution's prospects—even concerned about its very viability. "Frustration and cynicism were high." The result was paralysis and low morale. Afterwards, people paint a very different picture. People are working much harder—there's a new sense of energy. There's also a tremendous sense of pride in what has been accomplished. Members assume a responsibility for the institution's well being—there's a feeling of ownership. Finally, optimism pervades the members and there's a renewed sense of hope. There is a clear and cogent sense of institutional purpose.

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Figure 3. Beliefs about the Curriculum Pre-Revitalization

Post-Revitalization

L E M O Y N E - O W E N COLLEGE Our curriculum is weak and has a vocational Our curriculum is thoughtfully structured; • " T h e core [curriculum] and the emphasis: competencies are tied very closely • "Walker had tried to implement a co-op together. It's like the chicken and the egg program but... it was very loose and in terms of their impact on one people were sort of free to do what they another." wanted. " • "It was really a cafeteria plan—students • "McPhail reinitiated the teacher education program which meant of picked a little of this and a little of that." course building it from the ground up." • "Walker abandoned teacher education which was really a huge mistake." OLIVET COLLEGE Curricular choices are decided by the personal Our curriculum is thoughtfully structured: preference of faculty members and what we • "For the Olivet plan we redesigned the entire curriculum, we changed the think would appeal to students: calendar and now we have an Intensive • "There were many new professional Learning Term, a day each week for majors—anything that would bring portfolio." students in the door." • "You could teach whatever you wanted." • "If we're really interested in knowing what our students are getting out of their experience then we need to have some way we can analyze our students' experience than looking at transcripts or other kinds of detritus of the educational process. I think that is really the intention behind the portfolio is to create that possibility." TUSCULUM COLLEGE Individual faculty members and departments determine the curriculum: • "We were trying to be all things to all people. There was no core, just a loose conglomeration of courses."

Our curriculum is focused: • "I see our efforts as a kind of threelegged stool. The seat is the civic arts and the three legs holding it up are the competencies, the commons system and service learning. If there were a fourth leg it would be the standard academic programs and they're important as well. But the others are what make us unique and really grow out of our history as a college."

The changes in beliefs in these three areas show a remarkable transformation in the attitudes and values of institutional members. But, if one begins to look deeper and examine how these beliefs interrelate, the evidence suggests that they are far more cogent—that the institutional purpose serves as a unifying framework influencing how the curriculum is designed, how people relate to one another and understand their work.

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Figure 4. Beliefs about how Members Relate to One Another Post-Revitalization Pre-Revitalization LEMOYNE-OWEN COLLEGE We respect what the president is trying to do: The president is distant: • "There was a sense that [President] Walker • [McPhail] really wanted us to build... an elite liberal arts college with an Afrocentric was not m inding the store very carefully— perspective [...] but he was still very the faculty had a sense of real autonomy.** interested in traditional liberal arts. • "People had a real sense of respect for his academic vision.'" Faculty members focus on their classes and their We can work together: • "It was a collaborative effort.** departments: • "Prior to Ithe changes] people would really • "I m iss those old meetings where we'd argue...that type of interaction in the work very little outside their own division. faculty meetings about things!** And one of the things we wanted to do very much was to get people in different divisions talking to each other about intellectual things.** OLIVET COLLEGE The president is distant: The president wants us to help: • "There was a devil's bargain. The president • "Michael [Bassis] was asking us to take the past, the very rich history and build on it had been here 13 years and he told the for the future. To take those values into faculty 'you leave m e alone and I'll leave the future to create strong citizens.** you alone.*** • "It was as though we had two totally different agendas and their agenda was how can we stom p on faculty and the faculty's agenda was how can we teach students the best way we can." Faculty members focus on their classes and their We can work together: • "Before the college was very tribal. Faculty departments: members really want to get away from that • "[We were] an am orphous Medieval idea and be more holistic, more institution collection of departm ents that sort of oriented.** shambled along. " TUSCULUM COLLEGE The president wants us to help: The president is distant: • "We felt it didn't matter what we did in the • "[Knott said] Ί could create a curriculum and given the crisis you'd accept it. way of com m ittee work, the faculty didn't Instead, I'm going to challenge you. I can count very much.** point the direction but the faculty m ust lead us in that direction.*" Faculty members focus on their classes and their We can work together: • "We have a m ore interactive relationship departments: between the faculty and the • "The faculty was totally fragm ented.** administration." • "It's a close-knit faculty."

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Figure 5. Beliefs about the Institution's Future Pre-Revitalization L E M O Y N E - O W E N COLLEGE

Post-Kevitalization

We believe in the vision: We're going nowhere: • "This school has generated several • "Things had gotten stale." generations of leadership in this • "There were signs of neglect and signs of community and I'm convinced and a lot the institution being adrift." of people at LeMoyne are convinced that • "Morale was low." we'll do it or it won't happen." • "It's incredible. Around here people are working much harder and not griping much about it." OLIVET COLLEGE We believe in the vision: We're discontent: • "Before Michael [Bassis] left he said *It's • "Frustration and cynicism were high." not my plan, it's the college's plan, you • "We weren't doing our students of color developed it. And those of us who had justice." " W e were a small school been involved deeply in the process said, masquerading as a university with lots of "You know, that's right. It's our plan!*" programs." TUSCULUM COLLEGE We believe in the vision: We're in trouble: • "I thought that the college was going to • "Our overarching [academic] mission is the one we signed onto at the close down." beginning—to develop a sense of the • "There was almost nothing at Tusculum Civic Arts, civic responsibility on the that wasn't broken." part of students." • "We were graduating illiterates." • "I think there's a strong consensus that this institution has been revitalized."

TOWARD A NEW IDEOLOGY The shift in the belief systems also points to a subtle but important distinction regarding how purpose was created at these three institutions. Prior to revitalization, Olivet and Tusculum had no clear mission. Faculty and staff described their institutions as "lost" or "adrift" or, in the words of one faculty member, "trying to be all things to all people." By contrast, the overarching mission of LeMoyne-Owen never seems to have been in doubt. This raises an interesting question, why then did LeMoyne-Owen need a revitalization? And, how did its purpose-making differ from that of Olivet and Tusculum? In order to examine the disparate paths that led these institutions toward a coherent and actionable set of beliefs, we need to explore the concept of ideology further. Harry Abravanel (1983) offers a typology of belief systems, dividing them into three distinct categories: • Pre-ideologicah A belief system in which people understand and follow certain "practiced beliefs . . . without self-conscious rational argument." People act on understood rules of behavior but there is no overarching rationale for them. It is

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custom and habit that inform decision-making, not a carefully formulated plan or a clear sense of purpose. • Meta-ideological: "Abstract social and analytical philosophic belief systems [that] . . . include 'ultimate considerations' and abstract notions like the greater good associated with justice, freedom, and progress." A meta-ideology is "doctrine without a distinct action component" (p. 2 7 6 ) . It is the lofty expression of disembodied ideals. • Ideological: " A set of beliefs about the social world and how it operates . . . a cognitive map" which informs both ideas and action. An ideology can be a powerful force within an organization because it both expresses certain ideals and describes how those ideals ought to inform daily life. The ideology provides a sense of purpose and describes how it can be realized. Abravanel articulates the limitations of the pre-ideological and metaideological states and he notes the advantages of a clear ideology. However, events at Olivet, Tusculum and LeMoyne-Owen also suggest that these categories might constitute stages through which these institutions progressed as they sought to achieve Wallace's "ideal state of stable and satisfying... relationships." At the beginning, institutional life at Olivet and Tusculum was based largely on dysfunctional, albeit customary, arrangements (e.g., the devil's bargain). No guiding purpose informed institutional decision-making. Both colleges seem to have been in a pre-ideological state. Subsequently, discussions culminated in the formulation of new missions (i.e., Education for Individual and Social Responsibility and the Civic Arts). The lofty ideals expressed in these visions resonated with these communities and they were widely endorsed. However, such meta-ideological pronouncements (e.g., excellence, justice, and equality), while inspiring, are useless to an organization unless they impel specific action. Lofty ideals demand nothing of organizational members and are open to countless personal interpretations (even the conclusion that the institution is already promoting the ideals expressed in the vision!). This, then, explains why LeMoyne-Owen, which was clear about its overarching purpose from the beginning, needed to engage in purpose making. It too had to determine how exactly to put its meta-ideology (e.g., serving and uplifting the Black community in Memphis) into practice. For all three institutions, the movement from meta-ideology to ideology proved to be the most prodigious challenge. In creating a new institutional life, people not only had to put into place programmatic expressions of the new ideal, they also had to define new working relationships. At

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Olivet and Tusculum, the presidents radically challenged the assumptions of the faculty by ceding considerable control to them in return for greater accountability (an interesting reverse of the devil's bargain.) Thus, when the faculty at Tusculum resolved to adopt a focused calendar (block scheduling), Knott voiced his doubts. He recalled: " I told them I had reservations but I said if you're committed, I'll support you." Conversely, Bassis apparently favored a proposal that included the block plan but bowed to the faculty's ultimate choice. This kind of empowerment created new standards of behavior and led to alliances across departments and divisions. The beliefs after the change suggest that new norms of cooperation were established. (See Figure 4.) "Before, the college was very tribal. Faculty members really want to get away from t h a t . . . and be more holistic, more institution oriented." The extent to which these new beliefs were codified is particularly evident at Olivet where rules governing relationships—the Olivet Compact—were devised and even used for challenging specific behaviors. (See Chapter Four for details.) LeMoyne-Owen's journey towards a coherent ideology was further complicated by a paradox inherent in its meta-ideology. The College's overall purpose was to uplift the Black community in Memphis and the Delta. However, embedded in that grand purpose were two seemingly contradictory ideas—being a bastion of academic excellence in order to train the next generation of leaders and serving less academically prepared students, the "diamonds in the rough." Under the "Beacon of Hope" theme, McPhail sought to reclaim the College's academic prestige through the creation of the DuBois Scholars program, an honors program intended to serve young people with particular promise—"our talented tenth." This redressed the earlier over-emphasis on vocational training embodied in the co-op program. McPhail then restored LeMoyne-Owen's teacher education program, which had been a great source of pride in the past. McPhail also charged the faculty with creating a new two-tiered core curriculum, which allowed students with remedial needs to "catch up" and ensured that honors students would remain challenged. McPhail's inter-departmental committee structures encouraged greater cooperation between faculty members. By the end of McPhail's tenure, there is evidence of a shift from a meta-ideology to an actionable ideology. The institutional purpose that was forged seems to have endured. New norms of cross-departmental cooperation have continued and they contribute to a more satisfying institutional life. CONCLUSION The experiences at LeMoyne-Owen, Olivet, and Tusculum illustrate the complex process of creating a true, shared sense of purpose. The task

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required more than articulating new missions, it entailed creating institutional ideologies—complex and interrelated belief systems that better served the needs of the people at these organizations. And, as Wallace observed, those beliefs formed a new "pattern, organization, or Gestalt." The result was a system of beliefs that had not existed before. The contradictions imbedded in the old belief system were resolved and new beliefs and new norms of interaction replaced earlier dysfunctional ones. One Tusculum faculty member, in summarizing the events of the past decade, noted: " I think there's a strong sense of consensus that this institution has been revitalized." Indeed, a revitalization did occur on these campuses. The challenges that remain are understood to be part of the future work of the institution—a future where continued growth and change are possible. A measure of faith has been restored in the organization, a faith, as Abravanel (1983) points out, that can continue to mitigate the inherent contradictions that arise from organizational life. NOTE Beliefs are ideas or sentiments held to be "true" by members. A belief can be based in fact (e.g., "Enrollment is dropping and we're in trouble!) or it can be an article of faith (e.g., "We've really made a difference in the lives of our students.") Values indicate determinations of whether something is right or wrong, beneficial or harmful, valued or reviled. For simplicity's sake, as I discuss ideology, I will generally use the broader term, "beliefs." 1

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CHAPTER 4

The Power, Politics, and Pathology of Ideologically Based Change

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E L I E F IS P O W E R .

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E V E N T S AT L E M O Y N E - O W E N ,

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Tusculum richly illustrate that belief in a vision can draw people together and orchestrate their efforts in support of a shared goal. The creation of a vision, its subsequent implementation, and the ultimate formation of an ideology must therefore be viewed as a political act, and advancing a vision entails the use of time-honored political stratagems: Campaigning, constituency building, vote counting, and log rolling ("buying" support with promises or power). At these three colleges, a whole host of political strategies were used as the change process emerged, unfolded, and finally drew to its conclusion. The purpose of this chapter is three-fold: first, to describe the strategies used to advance the new vision; second, to demonstrate how faith in an ideology can be a powerful political tool; and, third, to explore the dark side of ideological change—the capacity of belief to blind adherents, cause them to misjudge the opposition, and even cause the formation of rival sects that view one another's goals as heretical and harmful to the cause.

THE POLITICS OF ADVANCING A NEW VISION In order to examine the political elements in the change efforts at the three colleges, I will focus on three distinct periods: • Rewriting the social contract: The period when cultural distortion leads to the recognition of the need for change and ushers in the first stages of revitalization. • Pushing for change: Once the vision is shaped, the movement grows and eventually begins formally to organize itself. 75

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• Securing change: As a specific change agenda begins to be implemented, the movement must counteract opposition and attempt to solidify its gains into the routines of organizational life. Readers will note that these three stages are an abbreviated version of Wallace's (1956) revitalization framework. They also correspond to organizational change frameworks (Lewin 1947; Schein 1985). Each stage has unique challenges and therefore each calls for a distinct response by the proponents of the new vision. Colleges and universities, rightfully called "the most paradoxical of organizations" (Birnbaum 1 9 8 8 ) , operate by means of a precarious balance of power. Because the goals of colleges are open to interpretation and the rights and responsibilities of the various constituents subject to negotiation, it is not always clear which group ought to be involved in any given decision (Cohen and March 1974). However, in general, three actors have political primacy at any college: the board of trustees, the president (along with, perhaps, the senior staff), and the faculty—particularly the senior faculty. Each has its distinct role. (Though, again, these may vary among institutions by issue and over time.) The board has ultimate authority over the entire institution, including the curriculum. Academic freedom grants the faculty license to teach their courses as they see fit and to determine the research they will perform. Further, since teaching and learning are at the heart of the enterprise, faculty members (or their representatives) are generally consulted in matters of broader institutional policy if they are likely to influence instruction. The faculty (often through a curriculum committee) approves courses, makes recommendations regarding the promotion of junior faculty members and can signal displeasure in the president through clandestine or open criticism and ultimately through a vote of no confidence. Finally, the president, who serves at the pleasure of the board, is responsible for "day-to-day management" of the institution (e.g., attracting students, entertaining alumni, slapping the backs of donors, and supporting, or at least placating, the faculty.) R E W R I T I N G T H E SOCIAL C O N T R A C T Sometimes this delicate balance holds, but it clearly held imperfectly at these institutions prior to the revitalization. One would assume, given the evident problems (e.g., declining enrollment levels, growing debt, low morale) that necessity for change would have seemed evident. The stage was clearly set. Where were the actors and what power prevented them from acting? There are a number of comprehensive discussions about the kinds of power in organizations (French and Raven 1 9 5 9 ; Mechanic 1 9 6 2 ; Kanter

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1977; Kotter 1977; Weber 1 9 7 8 ; Bolman and Deal 1 9 9 7 ) , which include coercive power, control of rewards, position power (formal authority), referent power (the individual's pursuit of conformity), expertise (special knowledge about a particular situation), and personal power (attractiveness or "charisma"). The data yield examples of each of these during the status quo ante. The "autocratic" president quelled dissent (coercion), and many board members and faculty members apparently chose to simply "go along" rather than question the state of affairs (referent power.) At the board level, the president's presumed "expertise" seems also to have played a role in reassuring anxious board members. Despite these examples, the deliberate use of power falls short of explaining what preserved the status quo. The single most important force sustaining it was, in fact, ignorance. The devil's bargain reveals the power of meaning making (Argyris and Schön 1 9 7 4 ; Brown 1 9 8 3 ; Weick 1995). As discussed in the previous chapter, the beliefs and norms that had guided institutional life were incoherent and conflicting. The organizational system seems to have been preserved largely through misinformation, assumption, abdication of responsibility, and even a degree of self-deceit. The balkanization and emphasis on constituent (or even self-)interests provided fertile ground for inaccurate perceptions to develop within the groups. In a cycle of assumption and blame (Argyris and Schön 1974), people faulted others for the institution's problems—the incompetence of the president, the "selfishness" of other faculty members, the apathetic board. No one knew what was happening within these institutions. The most important potential source of power, information, remained the scarcest resource. The faculty was uncertain how serious the situation had become. At Tusculum, one year before, the faculty presented its "bill of particulars" to the board; the ambiguity resulted in discussions of a vote of no confidence being hushed up. The financial situation was also something of a mystery. Neither the president nor any board member could have guessed with any degree of accuracy the state of the institution's finances. At Olivet and Tusculum, information was so incomplete that the depth of the red ink was not plumbed until months after Morris and Metzoff left. At LeMoyneOwen, a financial aid scandal took more than a year to even emerge. Finally, the various constituents had a largely inaccurate picture of one another. Board members developed a skewed perspective of the faculty and some began to view them as "troublemakers." At Tusculum, a board member told Knott that if he wanted to fire several senior faculty members who had stirred up trouble he would have the support of the board. (Whether that assertion was accurate or not, it demonstrates the intense animosity felt by at least that one board member.) Both the faculty and the board overestimated the support they enjoyed by the president. At Olivet, realization that discontent with Morris extended to the board emerged during

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a meeting between the faculty senate and the board president after the racial incident. A faculty member who was present commented: It was an interesting meeting because it's almost as though this conversation went on but it never was totally aboveboard—basically the message that got across was that the faculty was considering a vote of no confidence. And his response, it wasn't that overt but he didn't say "that's a terrible thing to do." So it was interesting. It was an interesting meeting. Some board members later admitted that they had simply not known the depth of the faculty's dissatisfaction and that they had largely been left in the dark. An administrator at Tusculum noted: "In general, I think the trustees were acting on good faith with bad information." Many faculty members saw this fragmentation as a deliberate strategy of their president, or as one Tusculum faculty member put it, " a divide and conquer kind of thing." However, it is not uncommon for people to attribute mysterious powers to their leaders—what Richard Elmore calls "The Wizard of Oz effect." Some have even recommended capitalizing on this tendency in faculty and have suggested maintaining distance as a technology for increasing "charisma" (Fisher 1984). Despite the allure of conspiracy theories, the evidence suggests that in these cases the leaders were less purposeful and more blind. They seem to have overestimated both their contributions and the patience of the faculty. Walker's sincere intention to maintain his position until 2 0 0 0 and Morris's ill-fated attempt to get all the students in an auditorium and "talk sense into them" after the racial incident both demonstrate a similar misjudgment. The reasons for their lack of awareness seem to be twofold. First, elites are generally the least affected by societal problems. They remained cushioned from its effects and therefore it is easy for them to downplay, ignore, or dismiss evidence that points to problems. A second reason is that over time, leaders are less likely to get reliable information. Hambrick and Fukutomi (1991), who have studied the "life cycle" of leaders note that after considerable time in office, executives tend to approach their tasks in habitual and systematic ways. They dislike the boat being rocked. Bearers of bad news are not welcome. Therefore the information they receive is increasingly filtered: They lose touch. In the midst of this seemingly intractable situation, some faculty began to conclude that a better way had to be found. This variable, this elemental idea and its search for expression created a shift in power that ultimately led to significant change. Its most important contribution was that it precipitated the gathering of information. "What is wrong?" The conversations among faculty members led to the discovery of an entire inventory of problems. As conversations added the perspectives of others to that 1

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inventory, the faculty members' conviction grew that the status quo represented a significant threat—that any action was less dangerous than none. Ultimately that realization, born out of a desire to find a more satisfying institutional life, spurred the faculty to approach the board. Once the information was conveyed, it proved a potent force among the board members as well. Board members who had been watchful but silent began to speak up and ask questions. As a more complete picture emerged, the false assumptions that had propped up the status quo began to disappear and the house of cards toppled. PUSHING F O R CHANGE After the president had been removed, the political environment shifted, and for the first time the movement had an opportunity to grow. Although the "vision" for where the institution might go was not yet apparent, the political support behind a comprehensive change effort became evident. Some members of the board argued for significant change. Eventually all three boards hired presidents who they felt would serve as change agents. Thus, by the end of the interim year, two powerful constituencies (the board and the president) stood squarely in support of significant institutional change. Within the faculty, however, the support for change was equivocal. This may seem counterintuitive. After all, a majority of faculty members had supported the ouster of the former president. But with that goal achieved, there was no consensus about the appropriate next step. Certainly there were some faculty members who supported the idea of change and who wanted to see the institution revitalized, but this group seems to have been a distinct minority. Others felt that the new president ought to be able to fundraise the institution out of its problems. There were also some anxieties over what change might bring. At Olivet and Tusculum, rumors had circulated that the board intended to "clean house." Further, there were influential faculty members who had benefited from the old structures of power. Some were chairs of departments or key committees and they intended to maintain their influence. Finally, at all three institutions, the faculty was a divided and contentious body—a congress with a dozen parties. So, given the ambivalence and the division among the faculty, how did the movement secure a political foothold? Although the desire to resolve the dissatisfaction in institutional life by developing a more meaningful sense of purpose was an important intrinsic motivator for many people, the movement was profoundly shaped by political considerations. From a particular perspective, the vision itself can be understood as a "deal"—a contract that required balancing the interests of

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various movement constituents. It meant drawing in participants by appealing to their pragmatism as well as their idealism. At all three institutions the visions involved tradeoffs. The redesign of the core curriculum meant a diminution of individual faculty autonomy— the curriculum would no longer be a list of courses that individual faculty members decided they wanted to teach. The power of academic departments was diminished because they could no longer determine which courses fulfilled distribution requirements for their area. The changes impacted individual faculty members because they would not be expected to teach new core courses that were collectively designed. On the other hand, participants in the process were given great latitude in designing that curriculum. Further, the new curriculum would presumably give faculty members greater control over what their students learned. A LeMoyneOwen faculty member observed: "We created a core in which they were required to take, instead of three classes of anything they wanted in the humanities, they were locked into what we call human heritage classes." [Italics added.] An Olivet faculty member described the tradeoff in this way: "The way I see it, most of the time faculty members sign on to general education reform efforts because they recognize the deficiencies in their students that they want general education to fix. And our, in our case, that certainly was true." One of the key roles played by the president was building a political coalition to forward the change agenda. Early on the presidents began identifying a group of supporters, what Kotter (1995) terms a "guiding coalition." These were insiders that the presidents felt that they could trust and who were influential within the institution. At Olivet, before Bassis arrived on campus, he canvassed faculty members by phone to see whom they might recommend for a vacant administrative position. While it certainly sent a message that he valued the faculty's opinion (a change from the status quo ante), it also enabled him to get a sense of which faculty members were well respected and/or influential. Among those whom Bassis drew in were "true believers" committed to revitalizing the institution. Others, however, were assimilated in a process that looked remarkably like horse-trading. The president secured the involvement of one department chair by supporting a significant expansion in that area. Another faculty member recalled Bassis's overtures to a senior faculty member. "Bassis knew that even though [the faculty member] had been one of the naysayers and himself a curmudgeon that if he co-opted somebody who had been here for a long time [and] knew the institutional history and who had potential for leadership, he'd have an insider." In some cases faculty members singled themselves out for the president. One enterprising junior faculty member drove to see Bassis while he was still at Antioch to give him a sense of the political landscape. A colleague recounted the event:

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[He] drove to his house and had a meeting with him and said: "You know there are some of us that really know this campus well and the place is really hurting right now and here are some things that I think would help you as you stepped in, into your new presidency."

The junior faculty member became a trusted advisor and later assumed a senior administrative position. Thus, building the political support for change involved persuasion on both idealistic and pragmatic levels. Constituency building occurred in committee meetings as well. The committees became forums for negotiating the "deal" that would become the vision. Initially, the presidents created opportunities for large groups to meet. During these deliberations, Bassis and Knott, in particular, were willing to cede control over the outcome in return for faculty buy-in. (Thus Knott agreed to the block plan with "great reservations" while Bassis regretted its rejection by the faculty as a lost opportunity.) However, the presidents ensured that whatever outcome prevailed would enjoy support from at least the majority of the faculty. Both presidents repeatedly underscored the message: "This has to be your plan." Thus the faculty were enfranchised as the political patrons of the new vision. An Olivet faculty member noted: "[The president] didn't tell us how we had to change... we were empowered to do these things and we just started to do them." The evidence suggests that these processes were, in fact, "collégial," "inclusive," and "fair —that collective deliberation and debate shaped the vision that resulted. And, the participatory nature of the process seems to have resulted in greater satisfaction in the result—a conclusion that is also well-supported in the organizational change literature (Shortell, O'Brien et al. 1995). Indeed, there are clear examples of people significantly influencing the institutional vision. Perhaps the best example was Tusculum's decision not to assert its Christian mission. Once, the college had attracted the sons and daughters of parishioners in Presbyterian congregations whose academic qualifications prevented them from attending more prestigious institutions. However, the college's ties with the Presbyterian Church had grown weaker over time, an experience shared by many colleges founded by religious communities (Marsden 1 9 9 4 ; Burtchell 1 9 9 8 ) . When Knott was hired, he had come from Catawba College. Further, Knott was an ordained minister. In his original formulation of the new mission, Knott pointed to the two founding purposes of the institution—to promote civic republican and Christian values. But the idea met with resistance. One proponent of the idea explained: Dr. Knott's ideology was that he wanted religious studies to permeate the curriculum. And I would say to him. "That's a beautiful, a wonderful idea. But how can it permeate the curriculum when you don't have faculty that are

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committed to discussing those kinds of, taking time to discuss those kinds of values in class?"

In fact, many faculty members were far more comfortable discussing civic education or responsibility to community than assuming the responsibility of informing the religious faith of their students. In later documents, the language in the mission was amended to promoting the Civic Arts and "Judeo-Christian values"—a more ecumenical idea. This underscores the tension that often occurs when the wider community cannot embrace an ideal. The ideals must be adjusted to suit the collective. Wallace notes that movements frequently must make concessions to various criticisms and affirmations by adding to, emphasizing, playing down and eliminating selected elements of the original visions. This reworking makes the new doctrine more acceptable to special interest groups, may give it a better "fit" to the population's cultural and personality patterns, and may take into account the changes occurring in the general milieu"(p. 2 7 5 ) .

The idea of the vision being forged collectively is an important one for organizational members. Such processes, however, are necessarily flawed as Winston Churchill noted when he remarked that democracy was "The worst form of government there is, except for all others." Democracy is imperfect. And, like any other system, it is open to manipulation. What constitutes a "fair" process is open to interpretation and dispute. The forms of participatory government (e.g., debate, discussion, policy formation, voting) often favor the dominant group. Since most people willing to invest their time in committee work supported change at least generally, outright naysayers were easily marginalized and controlled by mechanisms such as majority rule. The vision itself became a means of controlling the agenda. The initial formulation was lofty and rather vague, more of a meta-ideology, to use AbravanePs (1983) term. Although there were discussions and debates over precise wording, in general, many faculty members agreed about the overall idea. (Who would complain about teaching students better and teaching them to be more responsible—both ideas central to all three plans?) However, once the faculty endorsed the idea, proponents were able to narrow the agenda considerably. Rival ideas no longer were competing on a level playing field. Efforts to introduce the "back to basics" plan by math and sciences at Olivet, or the personal finance course proposed by the business department at LeMoyne-Owen, could be characterized as failing to contribute to the vision. Dissent about the overall vision became difficult because the new agenda was quickly divided and various elements turned over to committees. Further, the structure also divided people from others who might otherwise have formed a natural constituent block (i.e., depart-

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merits). As one faculty member put it: "Everybody was out of their comfort zone." We deliberately tried to build in inter-divisional teams to work all the issues out before they came to the floor so that floor discussions could be honest. But the divisive things we tried to work out and so there was remarkably strong faculty support for the things that happened.

Social pressure to conform also increased. Dissent became a faux pas. ("Hadn't we been through all that before?") People who remained "unconvinced" could be accused of being recalcitrant and unreasonable. Eccles (1993) describes a similar dynamic emerging in other "empowerment" strategies, such as Total Quality Management (TQM.) [It] is meant to "empower" workers to police their own performance, but not to set their own goals or target levels... this really means a management goal of "total management control" because of increased surveillance and monitoring of workers activities... heightened responsibility and accountability, [and] the harnessing of peer pressure within "teams."

This social pressure increased as time went on because of the personal investment made by individuals. These were Herculean labors and participants were keenly aware of the time and energy that they had expended and they intended to safeguard that investment. One Tusculum staff member remarked during the recent presidential search: We've worked very hard, created something that we're proud of, come a long way. We're not interested in someone who's going to arrive on campus and say, " O K , this program is ditched. We're completely redeveloping and starting over" I don't think anyone wants to start over!

SECURING CHANGE Change necessarily engenders opposition (Brown 1 9 8 3 ; Edelman 1 9 8 8 ; Heifetz 1991). Resistance occurred on two distinct levels. First, there were practical objections. As the change agenda was implemented—the consequences (intended and unintended) suddenly emerged. The winners and losers were made evident. People's jobs were going to change and it made a few very unhappy and very angry. There were also objections on ideological grounds—apostates about the vision, people who saw it as " a new coat of paint on what we were already doing," as one faculty member put it. A few individuals began to feel slighted—trapped in an institution that was pursuing an ideal that they quite frankly rejected. It is not surprising, then, as Wallace (1956) observes, that ideologically based change has the potential of engendering intense opposition. "Resistance may in some cases

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be slight and fleeting but more commonly is determined and resourceful" (p. 2 7 4 ) . A central question, then, as these movements advanced their agendas and continued to build their constituent base, became how to deal with opposition. The character of the opposition varied among the three institutions. At LeMoyne-Owen, there was a great deal of debate and negotiation in committee meetings about various proposals, but the issues seem to have been largely resolved through a collégial decision-making process. Some chose not to participate (which certainly suggests apathy, and possibly antipathy), but the accounts reveal no concerted effort by any person or persons to subvert the overall change effort. At Tusculum, the opposition was a bit more in evidence. For example, a number of faculty members questioned the pedagogical merits of block scheduling. One remarked: "Have you ever tried to take a drink from a fire hose?" But most viewed these debates, contentious though they were at times, as fair and ultimately contributing to a better end product. The opinions of the dissenters were seen as a key ingredient in the recipe for success. One faculty member referred to the "high quality opposition" and another termed them "the loyal opposition." The vocal critics of the civic arts left early on, for the most part. One person stayed on and continued to growl. Two guys in the foreign languages could never figure out a way to make foreign languages a part of this and weren't too happy about what was going on so they fell by the wayside and left. But in terms of active opposition—"Hell no, I'm not going to do this!"—I don't think there was an awful lot.

By contrast, naysayers were central figures in Olivet's narrative of change. Not only did members of the opposition attempt to block elements of the plan, they opposed the overall change effort itself and, finally, engaged in tactics designed to subvert the Olivet Plan. Eventually, their persistence prompted some rather harsh countermeasures by the movement, a subject we will explore in detail shortly. Is it possible to explain the variation in the intensity of opposition at these institutions? Schön's (1971) model of dynamic conservatism suggests, "Social systems resist change with an energy roughly proportional to the radicalness of the change that is threatened" (p. 38). Schön's concept is useful if we understand "radicalness" to constitute something more than sheer magnitude. After all, Tusculum's change effort (e.g., implement the focused calendar, revise every single course to fit that format, create a core curriculum, institute a service learning program, change to a "self-governance" model) was arguably the most sweeping. Nevertheless, opposition was not great—far closer to LeMoyne-Owen's than Olivet's. But if we consider the

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degree to which the people viewed the proposed changes as "radical"—a departure from current norms—dynamic conservatism begins to explain a great deal. For example, at LeMoyne-Owen, the opposition to the redesign of the curriculum was minimal because the majority of faculty members shared very similar concerns about the curriculum—it was simply not preparing incoming students for upper division work. The core curriculum seemed to be a sensible way to address this collective problem. One faculty member recalled: I didn't think the students were being taught well... There were these conversations occurring about changing the core curriculum. And I liked that direction because it was an attempt to make everything interdisciplinary. And we set up a two-tiered program, what we called core one, to address those deficiencies the students had, and core two for those students who don't have those deficiencies.

Even members of the business department, who could have seen the new core as a potential threat when the proposed "economics" requirement failed to receive support, came to believe that they stood to benefit from better-prepared students. The business department may not have been overly concerned about lack of representation in the core because it enjoyed, by far, the highest number of majors in the college. Thus, given the circumstances, the proposed changes seemed reasonable to people. At Tusculum, there was clearly a sentiment that without surgery the institution would die. Thus, the proposals were a response to a call for comprehensive change. Most apparently agreed early on that, in the interests of saving the institution, personal agendas needed to be put away. "There was a sense that we were engaged in a common endeavor which was refreshing because, even though we had our own axes to grind, those axes were pretty much sheathed." Given the dire circumstances, cooperation in the interest of expediting bold and sweeping changes seemed reasonable indeed. At Olivet, Bassis was clear about calling for a wholesale change and many board and faculty members rallied to Bassis's call for "transformation," but others resisted. Indeed, people were unclear how radical a change ought to be made. This ambivalence continued throughout the first year until the final "battle of the four plans" resulted in their merger, and the emergence of the Olivet Plan. One factor that seems to have influenced how radically people judged the proposed changes was the degree to which the changes departed from their current beliefs and self-concepts. In general, departure from the current institutional ideology seems to have engendered greater resistance.

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LeMoyne-Owen's vision of serving as a "beacon of hope" was consonant with its meta-ideology, its overall philosophy of racial uplift. The changes were simply strategies for realizing that ideal. At Tusculum, the civic arts emphasis was understood by faculty and staff as a return to an earlier forgotten ideal, but one people could readily endorse. The Tusculum faculty liked the idea of instilling in students a sense of responsibility to community. Though the strategies for achieving this goal were radical, the underlying ideology was not. Thus, resistance largely consisted of opposition to particular strategies, not the overarching vision. At Olivet, however, some viewed the change agenda as a rejection of Olivet's traditional institutional purpose. These traditionalists wanted Olivet to go "back to basics." They disavowed the link between Olivet's history as "the first college to admit women and Blacks" and the new move towards a social justice agenda. One change proponent noted: "This all just smacked of a little too liberal for them." CONSTRUCTING THE ENEMY Of course, not all strategies were subtle. In Chapter Three we examined the "carrots" (the structures that allowed for widespread participation and the conversion of skeptics, for example.) But as these processes moved forward, participants were increasingly tempted to employ a few "sticks." In a few cases, this meant metaphorically bludgeoning recalcitrant individuals into submission. "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs," the saying goes. The temptation inherent in any change effort is concluding that you can't make change without breaking some heads (at least symbolically.) Indeed, at all three institutions coercion played a role in the change efforts, such as the "more forced situations" at Tusculum and the firings at Olivet as well. At LeMoyne-Owen, though there's no evidence that anyone lost their job, people were coerced into participating. One faculty member, describing McPhail's zeal, recalled: "There was plenty of authoritarian in him." Proponents of the change concluded that the opposition had to be dealt with—the stakes were too high. Interestingly, among the three institutions some common themes emerge when describing the opposition. In a perverse way, this typology is the mirror image of the movement hierarchy observed by Wallace (i.e., prophet, disciples, and followers.) In the minds of the movement members, the opposition formed a kind of "lowerarchy" populated by caricatures and stereotypes—and as one descended to the deeper regions the opposition became increasingly intense and morally suspect. In the outer regions of the opposition resided the clueless, the iconoclasts, and the indolent. The clueless couldn't seem to understand the new 2

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vision or didn't see the value of particular initiatives. They didn't "get it." The iconoclasts had honest differences of opinions about the direction the organization ought to take. Some championed ideas that ran counter to overall movement objectives. For example, one rival plan argued for more traditional curriculum with more mathematics and science. A faculty member at Tusculum called the iconoclasts "the loyal opposition"— those willing to present ideas (off-key though they might be) and engage in the debate (even if they were frequently on the "wrong" side). Those belonging to the loyal opposition were greatly valued because they provided a counterbalance to overly idealistic ideas that may have proved untenable. They inserted a measure of pragmatism into the process. They also lent the process legitimacy, demonstrating that participation and debate were welcome. Then there were the indolent; these people were apparently too comfortable to make the effort to participate. Some of the "fence-sitters" at Olivet fell into this category. So did those faculty members at Tusculum who retained their second jobs and kept their committee work to a minimum. The clueless, iconoclasts, and the indolent, though outside the movement, were largely tolerated because they were not active in their opposition. In addition, there was always the hope that some of this group might be converted and become part of the elect. Proceed a bit further down the lowerarchy and you find those whose dissention was born out of discontent and even a measure of ill will. Among this group were the "old guard" or the "traditionalists"—a species common to all three institutions. The old guard was set in its ways. "Everybody had to interact with everybody else to do the interdisciplinary work—for some, it was painful! Especially when you've been rolling along and feeling fine about the courses you've been teaching." Uncomfortable with change, "they kind of hung back." In some cases, their behavior was interpreted as an institutional form of passive aggression—following "work to rule"—teaching their classes, holding office hours, sitting silently through faculty meetings, and then leaving campus. There were stories of the old guard accusing those who joined the movement of "selling out." Also among the disgruntled were the cynics—those who insisted on focusing their attention on the contradictions between the rhetoric and reality. "Some faculty felt that the reason why we're doing all this is because were trying to save our image as a college and maybe they felt it wasn't genuine—to them it was an issue of image-building." Then there were those with personal axes to grind—the "campus curmudgeon" archetype fits here as well as those who simply took a personal disliking to the president and/or the movement leaders. Finally, in the third and final ring of this organizational perdition resided the naysayers, that nefarious group committed to thwarting

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change. Some were jilted loyalists of the old regime. One Olivet member noted: Back earlier in the '90s there were a lot of people that had been here for years, in fact some were the faculty leaders and they had been in charge of various committees and the new president came in wanted do things collaboratively. All of a sudden, a lot of them started saying: "Why? Wasn't what we were doing good enough?"

The new movement displaced some people from previous positions of authority. Gouldner (1981) observes that when a change in power occurs at an organization, often there are "old lieutenants" who are resentful at having lost their favored status. There may be outstanding promises from the previous management that they feel they are "owed." "Since they are often placed in strategic positions, the old lieutenants are able to do substantial damage to the successor—if they want t o " (p. 2 8 2 ) . As the leadership of the movement was established, their lowered status was confirmed. In a few cases, this led naysayers to try and thwart the change process. One Olivet administrator offered: You'll probably find that [a couple of faculty members] might say that some faculty were pushed out, and that's simply because they had turned into roadblocks—they would actually lay down in front of the plan at times and say "Tell you what, that aspect or that initiative of the plan has to get to the policy committee? I think I'll run for policy chair and that will put and end to that."

The lowerarchy is a useful concept for a couple of reasons. First, it underscores the idea that movements must stand in opposition to something in order to exist (Diani 1 9 9 2 ) . Members of these movements were well aware of the opposition. In the case of Olivet, its presence and feared influence provided an important rationale to continue the struggle. As Edelman (1988) astutely observes: Sometimes political enemies hurt their opponents, and often they help them. Because the evocation of a threatening enemy may win political support for its prospective targets, people construct enemies who renew their own commitment and mobilize allies, (p. 66)

The lowerarchy also illustrates that when a group defines the opposition, it may end up creating what amounts to a set of caricatures. The motives of stock characters are simple to understand (e.g., "he's a cynic"; that iconoclast has "crazy ideas," etc.) And, the further down the lowerar-

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chy you precede, the more morally corrupt the motives. Edelman makes a similar distinction when comparing adversaries and enemies. Where an opponent is an enemy rather than an adversary, it is not the process but the character of the opponent that focuses attention. Enemies are characterized by an inherent trait or set of traits that marks them as evil, immoral, warped, or pathological and therefore a continuing threat regardless of what course of action they pursue, regardless of whether they win or lose in any particular encounter, and even if they take no political action at all. (p. 67)

Those at the bottom of the lowerarchy will stop at nothing to halt the change effort. The naysayers may be viewed as organizational terrorists of a sort. What this illustrates is the very human tendency to make sense of complex situations by simplifying things, classifying them. In fact, the evidence suggests that the "opposition" within these organizations was far less powerful and "dangerous" than some supposed. Dalton cautions, "One must always fight the sheep-or-goat concept of truth" (Dalton 1959). The fact is, individuals are not stock characters. Their motives are complex and their opinions shifting. Opposition to various initiatives in these cases came from all quarters—including the true believers themselves. It was ubiquitous and haphazard. Most of the people I spoke with had concerns about some aspect of the change agenda. One person at the center of the change effort at Tusculum expressed concerns about overemphasis on service learning. Some of the opposition occurred over issues that later seemed moot. For example, at Olivet, there was a spirited debate about whether the vision ought to be described as "Education for Individual and Social Responsibility" or simply "Education for Social Responsibility." Some felt the emphasis on the "individual" might communicate to students that they could avoid being responsible to society as long as they were responsible themselves. Others felt that "Education for Social Responsibility" sounded suspiciously like socialism. My point here is that opposition occurred for a variety of reasons and that the opposition was not a well-orchestrated guerilla campaign. For example, there were people who: • Liked the overall vision but didn't like specific proposals • Were ambivalent about the vision but, for pragmatic reasons, felt that overall change was necessary and supported change proposals • Supported some sort of change but who were opposed to the implementation of the new ideology • Rejected the ideology and withheld their support • Didn't like one aspect of the change but staunchly supported others

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The list could go on. One Olivet professor; explaining why some members of the opposition had resigned, observed: "It would be nice if this were like a television drama or something but there are all these mixed motives when people leave. Part of it's because of the [Olivet] Plan, part of it's a personality conflict with someone else, part of it is just 'Who knows?'" Nor was it always possible to determine who exactly was on the "other" side of an issue. At one point, members of the administration were attempting to determine who was opposed to particular aspects of the plan. In several cases there were seven votes against various proposals. One faculty member recalled: [Members of the administration] assumed that it was the same several people voting against it... It was different people! There were probably two or three people that really were voting against everything. But like, I voted against First Year Experience and I can't remember what the other thing was I voted against. And it was something that was just sort of a technicality but I didn't really like how it was coming across. And I voted for all the other things.

It is precisely because individuals' motives are complex that people resort to stereotyping. The stock characters of the lowerarchy serve as a kind of shorthand. For example, at each institution there were a few faculty members who fit the "old guard" label relatively well. There were others who no doubt fit it imperfectly. Still, the idea of an "old guard" was a useful one. It personified a particular kind of resistance to change and it provided a symbolic language for talking about that resistance. It may even be that these sorts of stereotypes provided imaginary whipping boys that were safe to disparage because they fit no one person perfectly. However, there is a significant danger that arises when the dark side of a community begins to be projected onto a particular group. Creating a locus of blame and either marginalizing it or driving it from the group is a time-honored social strategy. But, even if viscerally satisfying, scapegoating and witchhunting in institutions of higher learning is pathological and ultimately immoral. W I T C H - H U N T I N G AT O L I V E T The events that occurred during the interim year following Bassis's departure demonstrate how a community can be torn apart by ideological differences. Before we explore them it should be noted that Olivet's story is somewhat anomalous. There was some resistance by naysayers at LeMoyne-Owen and Tusculum—indeed, at Tusculum, a few naysayers were forced to leave. But at neither of these institutions were there protracted and bitter ideological struggles. Though Tusculum's changes were far-reaching (e.g., an entirely new curriculum, shifting to the focused cal-

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endar, implementing a competency system), there was a powerful consensus among all constituents that the institution had to change radically and quickly or die. Most naysayers simply packed up and left. At LeMoyneOwen, the faculty embraced McPhail's efforts to promote academic excellence and quickly came to see the value of a strong core curriculum. Only later did naysayers emerge, powerful board members who wanted to keep athletics and whose opposition caused McPhail to resign. However, there seems to be another factor that inoculated the communities from an ideological showdown. At LeMoyne-Owen and Tusculum (and even at Olivet before Bassis left) the communities allowed dissonant voices to be heard. Faculty members at all three institutions recalled spirited, even contentious debates. Knott and Bassis had publicly stated that opponents of the changes ought to consider working elsewhere. But such general pronouncements were largely viewed as statements of opinion rather than the initiation of an inquisition. By contrast, what seems to have occurred at Olivet upon Bassis's departure was the attempt to shut off dialogue. Two constituencies sought to silence one another in their vying for power and the soul of the institution. The story has much to teach us about how dogmatism—advancing a cause at any price—can threaten an academic community. It also demonstrates the ugliness of wielding ideology as a personal political weapon. When these events took place, there were significant concerns about the Olivet Plan's future. There continued to be a number of detractors— some quite vocal. The initial wave of euphoria had died out and some participants in the change efforts were beginning to get tired. The final straw seems to have been Bassis's announcement that he was leaving. This threw the fate of the Olivet Plan into serious question. In the words of one faculty member: "When [Bassis made the announcement] there were a few people that had been naysayers or fence-sitters in the past that sparked up a little bit and thought 'Wait a second, there's a chance that the Plan might come unraveled.'" Another noted that some naysayers advised students not to bother about doing their portfolio "because that will all be gone in another year." An issue that had been debated during the change effort was the role of diversity in the Olivet Plan. As discussed in Chapter Three, deeply embedded in Olivet's institutional identity is the notion of being a progressive, tolerant community. "We're the second college in the United States, the first chartered school to allow its doors to be open to educate men and minorities on the same level. I always talk about that to my students: 'Do you realize that's before the Civil War even happened?'" The racial incident in 1992 repudiated that ideal. It laid bare some of the tensions that had in fact existed for a long time. One administrator explained:

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Many of the faculty were not sympathetic. [After the racial incident] students had targeted the administration—th ey were careful not to point a finger at the faculty. Now th ey started singling out faculty members. I think they had a point. Th ere were faculty who clearly didn't see the student's concerns as valid or important—a sense that th ey were making a big thing out of it, you know, "Get over it." Still to this day there are some faculty and staff that feel that.

That sentiment at times assumed an aggressive form. One new faculty member recalled being approached by a more senior colleague. "She said: 'You know all this talk about diversity [...] that's really going to create division.' When I was approached I was like 'Gee, I wonder, I better ask my supervisor, am I in the right place?'" Perhaps predictably, this kind of rank bigotry was not in evidence in the interviews for this study. However, some faculty members did describe the issue of racial tension as "overblown." Some downplayed the racial incident. "It wasn't really racial, it was j ust a fight between a few people and some happened to be White and the others happened to be Black." Rival explanations were also offered. The reality is that we recruit students in large urban areas and we bring them to little Olivet. For a student that's used to a large town, they're not getting that h ere. [Before the racial incident] there were programs in place to take them to malls or to take them to special happenings in larger areas—I'm not sure how much of that actually occurred. What I've been told, even though I lived it h ere, was th at we truly weren't meeting the needs of all of our stu­ dents.

Thus, there was no consensus about whether or how the issue of diversity ought to be addressed or to what degree the Olivet Plan ought to emphasize diversity. Hoda Mahmoudi had come to Olivet as the Associate Dean of Faculty because she saw an opportunity to shape an institution around ideas that she cared about—issues of diversity and social j ustice. The fall before Bassis resigned, there were twelve vacancies in the faculty. Mahmoudi was asked to oversee these searches. When she arrived, only four percent of Olivet faculty members were people of color. She knew that to sustain a diverse student body, there had to be diversity in the faculty. She also was determined not only to maintain but to improve the academic credentials of the faculty by increasing the percentage of faculty members with terminal degrees. " I talked to Michael and said Ί will do this but I would like to push in two areas. First, I want to bring in Ph.D.'s. Second, I wanted to increase Olivet's diversity.' Michael and Jim said that that was fine." Finally, Mahmoudi wanted faculty members who believed in the Olivet Plan. Thus, there began a rather sustained lobbying effort.

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I spoke to the chairs and said we need to find people who will fit Olivet. There were hard decisions. In some cases departments chose people who were less qualified. I called in the chairs and said 'Don't you feel that this other candidate is stronger?' and I would explain my reasoning. Ultimately, I had the final decision—I was supported completely by Michael and Jim—and sometimes I chose people who were not the department's first choice.

Mahmoudi notes that by the end of the following year the percentage of faculty members of color had increased to a stunning 2 8 percent. "The Plan gave me leverage to make changes. I gave the chairs the Olivet Plan, the Olivet Compact [. . .] and asked them to keep those things in mind." Further, Mahmoudi required prospective faculty members to submit a statement explaining how they saw their academic and professional interests fitting with the plan. When Bassis resigned, the board appointed Jim Halseth, the academic dean, to serve as Interim President to ensure the continued stewardship of the Plan. Halseth then promoted Mahmoudi to Academic Dean. Some faculty members drew encouragement from the interim administration. "Fortunately, Halseth, the academic dean, was made interim president and he was here for almost all of it and essentially believed in it and so it kept going." Another remarked: There was continuity because the former Dean took over and he had been extremely supportive of my program—I really hated to see him move across the street because I really didn't get to see very much of him last year. So, from that perspective it was good. He knew about the Olivet Plan, he supported our continued work in it.

Indeed, Halseth and Mahmoudi not only expressed their firm commitment to the Olivet Plan, they saw the interim year as an opportunity to solidify it. The time had come to secure the gains that had been made and they were willing to be bold if necessary. Part of the strategy entailed dealing with the naysayers. The effort had begun before Bassis left. Bassis made it clear that the Olivet Plan was moving forward and that debate had drawn to a close. One faculty member explained: Michael encouraged them [to leave] by saying we've all developed a plan together. It's been a collaborative effort although some people have dragged their feet along the way—this is what we are going to do. So, you need to know that it will be an uncomfortable place for you to work if you really dislike what we're doing. This may not be the fit. There are 3 , 0 0 0 other educational institutions in this country; one of them has to be a good fit for you.

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For many change proponents, the hard line had been a long time coming. While the participatory and collaborative nature of the earlier process was greatly valued, many felt the time had come to consolidate the gains that had been made. A faculty member explained: Fm very grateful for the way Michael [Bassis] did it, but the dark side of that coin was that you always were feeding people's hope that it wouldn't happen. You gave them enough room to think there was a possibility of going back. I was always an advocate I guess—I want to get on with it. At some point in time let's just say OK no more choice. If you can't deal with this for whatever reason then go!

Halseth and Mahmoudi were prepared to do this uncomfortable, thankless, but in their view, necessary work. Mahmoudi remarked: "Some people will tell you we were hard—that we fired people to get our way. That isn't true. We talked to them. After a year when it was clear they weren't going to change we said 'How can we help you find a job somewhere else?'" Some faculty supported their efforts. One noted: "There were a couple of attempts [at forcing people out] that I thought were a little below the table but for the most part the moves that were encouraged were well merited and I was really glad to see some of the dead wood leave." However, other faculty members interpreted events in strikingly different ways. They viewed the interim administration as excessively "heavyhanded." They were concerned that "uncooperative" faculty members were being forced to leave. [There were] two people I know that were outright forced out. There were some other people for whom things were made so uncomfortable that they chose to leave. They were also opposed to the change. I would say that they were opposed. Not necessarily to the Plan or the whole nature of it, but that there were parts of it or aspects of it. Or the way that it was being implemented or that it was going too fast. And they were outspoken about it.

A few accused the administration of coercive acts. For example, one recalled that an accounting error led her department to underestimate its budget. When a request was made to reinstate the money, it was denied by the administration. The faculty member's interpretation was that "[our request] just fell on deaf ears. I think because our department chair was on the political black list." One faculty member recalled when a particularly outspoken junior faculty member came up for tenure. As mentioned earlier, at Olivet, "tenure" refers to a system of five-year contracts. The first granting of "tenure" entails the most stringent review. It is generally expected that, absent gross misconduct or negligence, a faculty member will pass subsequent five-year reviews. In this case, favorably impressed by

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his efforts in the classroom, the committee recommended he be granted tenure. He was not only denied tenure, as the administration put it, he was asked to leave. [. . .] They were—I don't know if it's afraid of him politically, but they didn't want his political influence here anymore, to the point that they paid him a year to not be here. Which in a school that has a lot of financial difficulties, is saying something really big.

Some felt the administration was out to serve its own interest. There were calls to tighten the budget: "We were being told that we should only buy paper clips for this month and not try to buy paper clips for the months to come." Meanwhile, the administrators were viewed as spendthrifts. "At one point they flew around the world to a conference, spending all sorts of money." To some, this constituted moral corruptness at the top. As one faculty member framed the sentiment: "There was a lack of trust—big lack of trust. They were engaging in uncompactlike behavior." The efforts to diversify and improve the academic credentials of the faculty also drew suspicion. A faculty member noted: 3

One of the things that people said when I got here was, we don't do a lot of publishing as faculty because we're really interested in teaching. I think that's good. It has drawbacks. But, at the same time, everyone we were hiring now had a PhD and had been published extensively. And all of a sudden you got the message that perhaps if you were not published, that your tenure at Olivet may dwindle.

Ultimately, the lack of trust and even paranoia led to petty acts of subterfuge. Anonymous, nasty letters were slipped under the doors of administrators. Of greater import was that a group of faculty members began meeting to discuss ways of addressing their lack of trust in the administration. An assumption guiding their efforts seems to have been that Halseth, realizing he was not going to be selected as Olivet's next president, simply decided to advance his own agenda. One faculty member remarked: "The Olivet Plan was our Plan; we've been involved in this and we didn't want to see someone destroy what had been built by everyone simply because they were upset that that they didn't get selected [as the next president.]" In a strategy that mirrored the earlier toppling of Morris, they went to the board. An administrator who participated in those discussions recalled: "Eventually the faculty turned on Jim [Halseth] and on Hoda [Mahmoudi] who worked for him. We called and talked with some board members separately to get their advice." The group ultimately decided to distribute a "ballot of no confidence"—to mail the ballots to faculty member's homes and have them collected by the secretary of the faculty.

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Once these events came to light, other faculty members contacted the board to protest what had happened. Ultimately the board determined that the vote was done improperly and they ordered the ballots destroyed. However, both sides described the end result as vindicating them. Mahmoudi remarked: "Five of them resigned when the plot failed. [. . .] [The Board] said that the whole process had been done outside of faculty rules." On the other hand, the faculty members who organized the "ballot of no confidence" feel that the events drew the attention of the board and forced them to act. One even went to far as to suggest that Halseth and Mahmoudi may have left early (although it is clear that both had accepted other jobs before departing Olivet.) "Well, if you look at the timing of the whole thing, Halseth ended up leaving office a little earlier than he had planned. And so did Hoda. And that's a big message for a lot of people." Even if factually suspect, symbolically the message was received. AN ANALYSIS O F T H E W I T C H - H U N T The purpose of outlining these two perspectives is not to determine what actually happened. Though it might be possible with further investigation (e.g., interviews with board members and other faculty and staff members) to develop a fuller account, these sorts of events are open to interpretation. Indeed, what matters is what people make of the events. What is striking is that despite the diametric opposition of the perspectives, the structure of the accounts has some rather startling parallels. (See Figure 6.) Figure 6: Comparison of Perspectives Interim Administration • We need to ensure the Olivet Plan survives. • We need to have a diverse and a wellcredentialed faculty (e.g.. published Ph.D.'s.) • Naysayers should be encouraged to move on. • The Olivet Plan gives us the "leverage" we need (the moral authority) to make these changes. • The opposition is "disillusioned" with the Olivet Plan and wants to thwart it. • The faculty opposition engaged in underhanded tactics by operating "outside the faculty rules." • We were vindicated: The trustees had the ballots destroyed. Several of the leaders of the movement left.

Faculty Opposition • We need to ensure the Olivet Plan survives. • We need faculty members (like us) who are committed to teaching. • It isn't right for people to be forced out because they have concerns about aspects of the Plan. • The administration is demonstrating "uncompactlike" behavior. • "This was our plan... and we didn't want to see someone destroy what had been built." • The administration is engaging in underhanded tactics. • "If you look carefully," Halseth and Mahmoudi "left early."

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Clearly the conflict arose from the divergent perspectives that developed around a number of issues: who ought to be hired, how to advance the Olivet Plan, who had the authority and "right" to hire and fire, how to deal with opponents of the Plan—the list could go on. What is striking is that beneath the divergent interpretations of events and motives, both sides behaved remarkably similarly. • Each side was committed to and concerned about the Olivet Plan: They felt that the Plan was important and that it was in danger of not moving forward. • Each side used its ideology to justify its actions: To the faculty, the administration had engaged in "uncompactlike behavior" and "we didn't want to see someone destroy what had been built." To the administration, the faculty was "disillusioned with the Olivet Plan," resistant to having diverse faculty colleagues. • Both sides sought to eradicate the source of the problem in order to restore the balance: According to some members of the faculty, the "ballot of no confidence" alerted the board to the internal problems and, as a result, Halseth and Mahmoudi left. According to the interim administration, the events finally freed Olivet of its naysayers. The attempted coup was thwarted when the board rejected the "ballots of no confidence" and several members of the opposition resigned. What these events describe is an organizational witch-hunt (Lutz 1988). Lutz argues that social dynamics very similar to those recorded by anthropologists exist in educational institutions, among these "witchfinding" (p. 329). People feared that things were going (or could go) horribly wrong. The person or persons responsible for the problem had to be identified. Blame could be placed because the actions of the offending persons, if correctly interpreted, demonstrated their immorality. The enemy was then judged by the community (e.g., the "ballot of no confidence" and the intervention by the board) and, in the interests of seeing order restored, the enemy was destroyed. What makes the Olivet witch hunt particularly intriguing it that it is impossible to say with certainty who was the witch and who was the hunter. Both sides engaged in remarkably similar strategies. But central to both efforts was an overriding dependency on ideologically driven interpretations of events. Both used their understanding of the institutional ideology to justify their actions. One of the most pernicious elements of witch hunting is that "evidence," when closely examined, is often speculation, rumor, and supposition. And "as witchcraft and its modern organizational equivalents are

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capable neither of proof nor disproof, the accused are helpless to prove their innocence" (Lutz 1988 p. 3 3 5 ) . The events illustrate the dangers that arise from ideologically based maneuvering. Although vision can liberate and motivate, it also, paradoxically, can blind. Securing the vision can become so important to zealots that all means are justifiable if they are seen to hasten the realization of the ideal. When this occurs, belief has calcified into dogma. "The leaders and the led [become] swallowed in the purpose of the movement" (Burns 1978). Disparate views are silenced and people sacrificed for the good of the cause. And in so doing, the proponents of the vision violate the very norms established by the movement itself—openness, discussion, debate, inclusion. CHAPTER S U M M A R Y The creation of an institutional vision (the revitalization) is a powerful catalyst for change. At these colleges the vision drew together potent political forces. Ultimately, the pursuit of the vision resulted in the creation of an ideology that guided the change process and continues to inform institutional life. These movements were able to achieve their political goals by making use of common structural forms (e.g., committees, task forces, and full-faculty meetings). The mechanisms of participatory governance became a venue for winning converts and building at first a guiding coalition and later a coalition powerful enough to hold sway politically. As the movement grew, these governance structures were used to curtail the political influence of naysayers (e.g., dividing the vision into discrete tasks to be addressed by committees.) One of the most important means for securing power by the movement was the formulation of the vision, which represented a "deal" negotiated from the ideals and interests of various groups—"true believers" and pragmatists agnostic about the ideals, but interested in the programmatic implications. Once that deal was set, the change agenda narrowed considerably and in some cases intense opposition arose. A difficulty facing any change effort is how to deal with naysayers, persons who actively oppose the agenda. This is particularly problematic for ideologically based change efforts because the ideals expressed in the vision, while potent motivators, can be used to justify politically expedient actions. The more people believe in the importance of the movement's goals, the more they may be tempted to take actions that serve the "greater good" but are, in fact, ethically suspect. Adherents may justify their behavior by demonizing the opposition and using service to the ideology as an excuse. The irony, of course, is that their politically expedient behavior

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morally degrades their cause. There is even a danger that such violations may become acceptable norms, encouraging future acts of political hardball. NOTES Personal communication. I am indebted to C.S. Lewis, whose diabolical character Screwtape coined the term. The Olivet Campus Compact was written in the fall of 1 9 9 9 . The document grew out of a daylong large group event in which the Olivet community attempted to outline rules of behavior for members of the community. 1

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CHAPTER 5

Sustaining a Sense of Purpose and the Social Construction of Success

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chapter is to explore the nature of the "harvest" at these three institutions. Thus far, I have described how creating a shared sense of purpose provided an avenue for reconciling divergent interests among faculties and administrations. Further, the process of forging a shared purpose closely mirrors Wallace's cultural revitalization framework. Clarifying the institutional mission resulted in the development of what amounts to a new organizational belief system—a "faith" that gained adherents over time and promised hope and a better future for the institution. The events at these three colleges suggest that such a faith was a powerful cohesive and motivational force. But has it been sustained? Of central importance in maintaining commitment to the new mission were credible claims of success. Such claims legitimized and reinforced the new mission, proving that the change effort was on the right track. Some of the evidence offered to underscore success was very practical in nature (e.g., the development of a new curriculum, increases in enrollments, success in fundraising, pay raises). However, members also made use of anecdotes and stories. In nearly all cases, members described their institution's progress in highly symbolic ways. To understand this phenomenon, it is important to examine members' conceptions of success. During the interviews, success was substantiated by members in three distinct areas: 1. improvements of programs and policies; 2 . betterment of institutional life; and, 3. enhancement of the attractiveness of the community.

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N E W PROGRAMS AND POLICIES Programs and policies are the most visible signs of progress towards the ideal in the minds of members. Extensive curricular reform, calendar changes, creation of service learning programs, new governance systems— all are viewed as substantive innovations, and all required a tremendous amount of work to implement. The details of these initiatives have been described elsewhere. The point here is that members see their very existence as an accomplishment. However, members have also developed means of verifying their efficacy—the development of student competencies. Attention to the competencies and their measurement is a means of legitimizing the efforts and gauging progress towards the new educational vision. Each college developed a list of competencies—areas in which students must demonstrate mastery before graduation (e.g., critical thinking, selfknowledge, moral reasoning, and responsibility to community). The competencies are a form of outcomes assessment—envision the end result (the kind of person you want to graduate) and work backward to try and induce that result. A faculty member at LeMoyne-Owen described the process in this way: We went through our academic program with a fine-toothed comb. We started with basic criteria—the competencies. What do we expect a graduating college student to know? They were developed on the departmental and divisional level really. What do we need to teach in our area? And then we'd get together and say, okay, who's going to teach geography? Well, we can because when you're teaching humanities, you want to know where Paris is, where Rome is, where Beijing is.

The competencies were not only used in the redesign of the core curricula; the competencies were expected to be incorporated into all new courses. A LeMoyne-Owen faculty member observed: I have been the chairperson for the curriculum committee for many, many years. The proposals [for all new courses] are of great value because the faculty members are aware of what students need and they include the competencies in some form.

Each institution then made an effort to assess the impact of their programs. LeMoyne-Owen validated the new core curriculum several years ago by offering a group of students a nationally normed test. One faculty member noted with satisfaction that these students performed "on par" with students nationally.

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I haven't really seen the results myself but a small number of students took exams [...] three years ago or something like that and [. . .] those who took the program the way it was supposed to be were scoring about the same, within two or three points, of average college kids from all over the country.

At Olivet and Tusculum, "homegrown" assessment tools measure student progress. The Portfolio Program at Olivet requires all students to generate a collection of artifacts (e.g., analytic papers, descriptions of projects, poems, art work) accompanied by a written explanation of why the artifact demonstrates mastery of a particular competency. Students receive advice from their Portfolio Advisors whom they meet with weekly. At the end of sophomore year students must undergo a "validation" process and defend their portfolio. Tusculum's competency program is similar. Students are also required to submit artifacts and written rationales to a faculty committee. But they may submit them at any time before graduation, and they may submit them one at a time. For example, a paper from a servicelearning course might be used to demonstrate attainment of greater "selfknowledge." A faculty committee reviews each submission and may require students to revise and resubmit. To members at Olivet and Tusculum, these systems generate ongoing evidence that the educational purpose is being served. Apart from the institutional assessments, individual faculty members draw their own private conclusions about the impact the new mission has had on students' learning. A faculty member at LeMoyne-Owen asserted: "Generally speaking the turnout of the students, [after we instituted] the core curriculum, was much better." Another concurred: " I think we've seen our students' abilities and skills improve. [...] I saw them as freshmen, and in my division I saw them as seniors and I could see their progression." This same sentiment was echoed at Olivet: "Our students are a lot more sophisticated than they were when we were under the old system 1 0 - 1 5 years ago—they are just experiencing things that are a lot broader. So, in those terms I think we're successful." There are also many stories of individual students whose lives have been changed. B E T T E R M E N T O F I N S T I T U T I O N A L LIFE The second source of success is the perceived improvement in institutional life—the sense that the efforts have both galvanized members and rebuilt broken relationships. This process has been described in detail already. (See Chapter Three.) Nevertheless, it's important to restate that members see the greater sense of community as an important outcome of their efforts. Further, members see the shared sense of purpose as intimately connected to that renewal. As one Tusculum faculty member asserted:

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There certainly are disagreements but I really think there is a lot of respect. I think that's founded on the recognition that pretty much all of the faculty are really committed to teaching and to the growth and development of the students. And even if we disagree about how some particular issue ought to be handled, that's usually balanced by a sense that we're all trying to get to someplace that's similar with the development of our students [ . . . ] the Civic Arts idea that we signed on to at the beginning.

The betterment of institutional life is primarily conveyed through stories. Stories provide a holistic account of what transpired. They are also personal accounts and therefore not easily refuted (that is, to refute the story is to impugn the judgment of the storyteller.) Interestingly, many of the stories have a similar structure. They describe success as a kind of journey, a progression towards the ideal. Within the accounts are classic literary elements—a crisis emerges, the community rises to the occasion, members work together to overcome tremendous challenges, there are heroes and sometimes monsters, but ultimately the group triumphs with the possibility, if not the promise, of a "happily ever after." Particular phrases crop up again and again in various accounts. For example, at Olivet, a number of people referred to the "devil's bargain." At Tusculum, people described the presentation of the "bill of particulars" and ironically recalled the hardship of the "golden years." This suggests that the stories are communal property. They are morality tales that feature the qualities of the community—the necessity of sacrifice and the virtue of persistence, the importance of collaboration, and the need for courage in hard times. The stories also give witness to the distance traveled. They present a perspective that reminds members that, although the ideal has not been reached, it is far closer now than it was when the changes first began. By implication, the community is encouraged, reminded that it has the capacity to address whatever challenges may lie ahead. The stories celebrate the accomplishments of the community and may pay homage to heroes or warn about potential dangers. In short, the stories reinforce the community by recollecting the successes and the progress towards the ideal. ENHANCED ATTRACTIVENESS O F T H E C O M M U N I T Y Third, and finally, members measure their success by the extent to which the institution is viewed as an attractive and worthwhile place. One critically important group is the student body. At Olivet the racial crisis had resulted in the sudden departure of most African-American students—a catastrophic rejection both psychologically and fiscally. Now, that has changed. One faculty member noted with pride: " I think we've been successful because we do have an incredibly diverse student population and staff population and that is the reality of the world now." An administra-

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tor observed: " I think [at the time of the crisis] probably only 3 percent of our faculty were people of color or international faculty. I think now we're probably at 2 5 - 3 0 percent, and we've done it in six years!" At LeMoyneOwen, members had been concerned with retention and the generally poor academic preparation of incoming students. This was disheartening because of the College's self-perception as a once-proud, academically rigorous institution. However, this situation has been turned around, thanks to new support systems. What's more, members point to the increasing quality of their students. An administrator offered: "This year, not only did we have an increase in enrollment but we had an increase in the number of students with very high test scores and [...] we have three valedictorians from this city alone." A faculty member picked up on that theme: "That's something that we're really proud of. Out of 2 5 or 2 6 senior high schools in the City of Memphis we got three of them and that was kind of a coup." Another means of gauging the desirability of the community is the perception of new members. Faculty turnover has been a perennial problem on all three campuses because of low pay and high teaching loads. However, members point to the new mission as a means of drawing in competent and committed colleagues. Members note the outstanding quality of new members, proud that very able people want to join these once-obscure institutions. For example, several members at Olivet stated with pride that the college now has "Ivy League-educated" faculty members. Sometimes newer faculty members will testify to their own decision to join the community based on the mission. A Tusculum faculty member who arrived during the implementation stated: I still carry this [job announcement] around. I was teaching at a university and I came to feel that I really was not happy in an institution which placed students and student development and the creation of a more just society way down on the list of priorities. And so I decided after 20 years in those kinds of institutions that I was going to look for someplace really different. And this drew me here. "The college aims to become a center for the Civic Arts whose graduates will acquire the skills, knowledge and motivation necessary to be highly capable and active participants in the public life of their society." I said, that's what I'm looking for.

A junior faculty member at LeMoyne-Owen echoed these ideas noting the intrinsic rewards of working at the College. There's really a very serious commitment that people have to this particular college, and of course it goes beyond monetary rewards because a private college doesn't pay as much as traditional colleges. But people are committed to what they're doing, and that's so important.

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The community's attractiveness is also underscored by the improved perception of external audiences, especially the local community and professional associations. One LeMoyne-Owen faculty member recalled: "The thing that really got the greatest attention was our work in the community." Soon after McPhail arrived, he announced a partnership with the Memphis Housing Authority and LeMoyne Gardens, a troubled housing project. This work raised the profile of the institution considerably. A faculty member remarked: " A lot of things that we did got us national attention. We were featured on the Today Show. There was an article in the New York Times about us, I mean, it was exciting stuff!" At Olivet, the racial incident had been the College's albatross since 1 9 9 2 . Olivet's Director of Marketing and Communications noted that when he first arrived and began contacting reporters their response was: " O h , Olivet. You're the place where that racial incident happened!" [. . .] It was even written in their stories that way. You'd have the lead to a story, and the second paragraph would be the reminder—even within the last year. We've finally gotten over that. I feel that that's been a major victory for us.

Prior to Knott's arrival, Tusculum's stock in the community had gone south over a period of years. The college had long recruited outside the area and one administrator quipped that it was in Greeneville but not of Greeneville." A senior faculty member who came from the area remarked: u

This used to be a college that was known as "that Yankee school" because we had so many students from the northeast, New Jersey particularly. And the people in the town of Greeneville would not have that much to do with the college. But now we are Greeneville and Green County's college. We have students from Greeneville and Green County and people come to campus for a whole variety of activities.

The attention from professional associations has also been greatly valued. Members have been asked to present at national conferences, participate in research studies, and have been identified as model campuses. Knott remarked: "The college has done pretty well in earning its spurs among professional associations. People recognize the magnitude of what the folk there did." A LeMoyne-Owen administrator explained the importance of this kind of recognition: One of the things that I think a lot of people don't understand is that validation is terribly important. We'd been pretty much isolated. We were not part of any national context—the UNCF and the HBCUs yes but not in terms of other national contexts. It helps to professionally engage faculty and to engage the institution.

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A faculty member at Olivet echoed this sentiment: You know, I actually feel good about being here. When I go to conferences, I feel good about telling people where I'm from. People at Olivet once hung their heads and looked at their feet when they were out in public—you know we're from this poor, third-rate liberal arts college—and now we don't do that. You go to conferences and people say " O h , Olivet, I've heard of that, it's amazing what you guys are doing!"

The acclaim is particularly sweet because the more-senior members still recall being from a "third-rate liberal arts college." Now the once ugly duckling looks in the waters and sees the swan. CHALLENGING M E M B E R S ' CONCEPTIONS O F SUCCESS Although these conceptions of success play an important part in legitimating the new institutional purpose and creating a sense of satisfaction and pride among members, even a cursory examination of the "evidence" reveals its ambiguous nature. Members' claims could at a minimum be qualified by examining the significant shift in the environment during the past decade. While it is indisputably true that these institutions are financially stronger (e.g., completed capital campaigns, boosted enrollment, enlarged their endowments) the economy during the intervening years has moved from recession coupled with inflation ("stagflation") to almost unparalleled prosperity and growth (even with recent market corrections.) Even small endowments have benefited from the rising tide of the market, as have the pocketbooks of alumni and key supporters. One could argue that prosperity as much as excitement over the new mission has prompted the largess of donors. Stronger enrollments have no doubt been positively influenced by the boom in the post-secondary student population, which is expected to continue at least through the middle of the decade. That increase in "supply" surely has contributed to increased applications— more, and better, students. Further, some of the evidence in the success stories could be interpreted in less favorable terms. For example, although members at Olivet bragged about the presence of " Ivy League educated faculty members," my investigation uncovered just one (junior) faculty member who did postdoctoral work at an Ivy League institution. LeMoyne-Owen notes that area valedictorians have chosen to attend the college, but three "out of 25 or 2 6 senior high schools in the City of Memphis" might pessimistically be seen as a paltry number. Even the so-called "systems" of validation are suspect. It is unlikely that any student who made an effort would be washed-out by either the Portfolio system at Olivet or the competency system at Tusculum. Asking

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students to self-report on their learning, as they are required to do under these systems, only demonstrates that they have learned to articulate the competencies, it does not guarantee their mastery of them. Indeed, it is plausible that a primary purpose of these systems is to reinforce what members want to believe—that students are learning and growing as a result of the new curriculum. T H E INESTIMABLE VALUE O F SUCCESS I offer the above rather gloomy and cynical assessment not to discredit the accounts of members. I think a convincing counter-argument could easily be mounted. But the point is, any argument would at best be convincing, not conclusive. Measuring the impact of educational efforts is fraught with difficulties. Success in this arena is necessarily equivocal—subject to interpretation and based as much on faith as it is on fact. What matters to members, however, is that the conceptions of success keep the dream alive. Members offer up interpretations that serve the cause. They may never entertain alternate explanations because this leads to qualification and confusion. This is not duplicity; it simply reflects the propensity of people to make meaning in ambiguous circumstances. Narratives are the principal tools of enhancing social cohesion through meaning making (Bruner 1990). Robinson (1981) observes that 1

given mankind's propensity for inductive generalization, noteworthy experiences will often become the empirical basis for rules of thumb, proverbs, and other guides to conduct. Thus, telling stories about remarkable experiences is one of the ways in which people try to make the unexpected expectable, hence manageable." (p. 60)

Stories of success steer people's attention away from persistent problems (e.g., difficulties in growing the enrollment and the endowment further, the ambivalence of many students towards the new vision) and highlight the progress that has been made. The stories give evidence of social cohesion in three areas: 1 ) that people have been drawn to the community (through improved attractiveness); 2) that members have developed a stronger community (the betterment of institutional life); and, 3) that members have created the means of fulfilling the institutional mission (new programs and policies). Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1972), in her study of Utopian communities points to these same three areas as central mechanisms for maintaining member commitment—"continuance, cohesion, and control" (p. 67). Kanter asserts that generating commitment is the most important project for any community based on a shared ideal. A community

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must ensure high member involvement despite external competition without sacrificing its distinctiveness or ideals. It must often contravene the earlier socialization of its members in securing obedience to new demands. It must calm internal dissension in order to present a unified front to the world. The problem of securing total and complete commitment is central (p. 6 5 ) .

The success stories provide convincing evidence to members that all of these conditions are being met. One might even suggest that the faith of the members in the face of such equivocal evidence underscores their faith in and commitment to the new institutional purpose. However, the data indicate that the long-term preservation of the faith is uncertain, that perhaps it is contingent on factors that are ephemeral. The faith in the institutional purpose may have reached a point of maturation, and may even be beginning a long, slow descent. T E M P E R E D IDEALISM The costs of maintaining a radical commitment to a vision, particularly an idealistic one, are high. Indeed, there is a sense among some at these colleges that the costs of its maintenance may outweigh the hoped for, but as yet unrealized, ideal. Increasingly, idealism has been tempered by pragmatism. Pragmatism is an important element in any change process, even an idealistically motivated one. Along the road of innovation are rusting hulks of ideas that turn out to be clunkers. Other ideas require adjustment and fine-tuning before they can move forward. The same is true at these institutions. At LeMoyne-Owen, concerns began to emerge that the core may, in fact, have been too rigorous. Some students were simply unable to complete the academic program in four years. Eventually, the board asked for a relaxation of requirements. To one "true believer" it smacked of capitulation, "Apparently some people on the board said 'That's too hard!' so we dropped the foreign language, and we dropped humanities back to two courses—only six hours." But others were more pragmatic. "We realized that with the core and all the hours that we required it was going to be pretty difficult for a student to finish in four years. We were trying to be realistic." At Olivet, similar kinds of adjustments are also being made. We're refining. Like [the course] Self and Community I think is really solid. Portfolio is being tweaked, so is F Y E [First Year Experience]. But we have some components that are really, I think, pretty strong. But some other ones are being modified and still being worked on.

But the forces of pragmatism have also led to the modification of some of the grand experiments sponsored by these efforts. The most distinctive

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elements have come under intense scrutiny. The reasons for their alteration are based less on clear evidence of failure and more a lack of commitment and understanding on the part of new members. The best illustration is the modification of Portfolio at Olivet and the competency program at Tusculum. These programs were conceived as a means of radically altering the educational system—focusing students' attention on their own growth and learning, making them full partners in the effort. As one faculty member described Portfolio: [Bassis] wanted the portfolio to become a central component—really radical and progressive and curriculum-based education would be out the door. That was years down the way, but he was looking for that and he wanted things to work out that way.

The radical nature of the ideal is underscored by another faculty member's observation. I hope that the whole grades and credits thing will be seen to be an artifact of the industrial age and we can let it go and move on to something that's more useful in terms of encouraging students to learn, and recognizing learning that they do. But it's going to be a while yet before we can do that.

However, these programs were so unlike what students had experienced before that the result was confusion and consternation. They didn't understand or believe in its value. Student reaction led faculty members to alter the program over time. Originally, Portfolio was a non-graded seminar. However, one faculty member noted, "It didn't matter in terms of students' grades point averages and that kind of thing and a lot of students just didn't do it—at all." In order to ensure student participation, yet maintain its characteristics as an alternative assessment program, Portfolio was made pass-fail. Then, students complained that although Portfolio couldn't boost their GPA's, it could hurt it if they failed. A faculty member ruefully observed: So, just in the last couple years we actually went to a graded seminar, which in a lot of ways I think is counter productive. But I remember one feedback session where I asked students to come and just talk about their experiences. One student said: "Well, if you really cared about this you'd give us a grade." All the rest agreed.

But student ambivalence continues unabated. "You've probably heard from people that students aren't as enthusiastic about it as we'd like. I jumped up in front of the portfolio class extolling its virtues. That isn't

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enough. I don't know what exactly we need to do. We don't have the answer there." Tusculum's competency program faces similar resistance. For example, a student submitting an " A - " paper might not receive credit for a competency. If that occurs, the committee has either concluded that the artifact or the rationale (or both) provided insufficient evidence of competency, but such subtle distinctions are lost on many students. When a student submits academic work and fails a competency, his or her response is almost inevitably, " H o w did this happen, didn't I get a good grade?" Faculty members (particularly the one who gave the grade) find themselves explaining to students again and again the reasons behind having the system. Some faculty members have concluded that they have cultivated a system that students neither understand nor value. As one faculty member remarked: "To most of them, it j ust seems like double j eopardy." Already there are discussions about embedding Tusculum's competencies in the curriculum and having course grades demonstrate achievement of those competencies. For one final example of the diminution of unique institutional features, I turn to the adj ustments in Tusculum's "self-governance" system. The arrangement was created for two reasons. Pragmatically, faculty members wanted more authority over internal matters. A faculty member explained: After wh at we'd been th rough [with Metzoff], th ere was not a willingness to passively submit to a traditional academic leader. And th at meant we want­ ed hands­on management. Later on we found out th at h ands­on management sometimes created conflicts in time.

However, the more idealistic rationale was that the arrangement supplied the means whereby faculty could themselves practice the Civic Arts. So, faculty committees assumed virtually all the administrative functions normally handled by a dean. In an even more radically democratic gesture, they expanded representation to staff members allowing those who taught as adj uncts or who served on faculty committees to apply for faculty status, with voting rights. A senior staff member recalled: "At one point, out of our roughly 2 5 0 employees there were 4 0 staff with faculty status so all in all we had a group of about 70 faculty." Over time, the perceived need for and interest in maintaining this ideal began to wane. A senior faculty member noted: "People became very, very tired. And it was an Ί j ust can't attend one more meeting' kind of an attitude. [...] So we have revamped the committees somewhat and we j ust decided we don't have to meet that much." Further, the original pragmatic rationale for assuming such a large load—distrust of the administration—no longer seemed relevant given the current circumstances. The relationship between faculty and administra-

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tion had moved from antipathy to partnership. Staff members let their faculty status lapse, glad perhaps of a decrease in responsibilities. A staff member remarked: "It's kind of pared back until there are relatively few people now who have faculty status." Eventually, an interim Vice President for Academic Affairs was selected. A faculty member described

the

changes: We did major faculty constitution revision this year, which has gone a long way toward addressing the problems we had earlier. We've given a lot of authority not as much as I'd like but more authority back to the Vice President, freeing the faculty from worrying about—well, the registrar now decides who's on probation for instance! The exhaustion of veteran members is compounded by the conventional assumptions of new members. One senior faculty member pointed out: Tensions developed with new faculty coming in who were more comfortable with more traditional governing structures. They found [us doing] a lot more governance than they were used to, were puzzled by that, and therefore began to reshape the governance structure as they came into positions on the committees. It took four or five years for that to begin to happen, but that led then to questions of 'Are we losing what's distinctively ours?' particularly among the older faculty [...] who had invested so much, late in their careers, on this special effort. They were reluctant to give it up. A LeMoyne-Owen faculty member remarked on the supplemental training required by new faculty members. You have a constant influx of new faculty members and most of the faculty that come in, as well as those that are here, simply do not know all of the things that people of African descent have contributed to civilization. And so it's an ongoing process trying to bring people into view with what's happening. Often, these sorts o f efforts prove fruitless. No matter how expertly it is presented, it is difficult for prospective members to comprehend the nature of the work. Once they arrive, new members balk at the additional responsibilities. An Olivet faculty member remarked: Some people buy into it, some people don't. And you have people come in, they think it looks good, but when they realize the amount of work that we're still doing, some of them don't want to do it. They want to go do their research or they want to go do other things.

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The same is true at Tusculum. I think it requires hiring a special kind of person and we have to pay more attention to that, in terms of explaining to prospective people who want to work here what we are trying to do and then see if there's a fit. Because we bring people in, then they leave right away just because they look at us and say, "Are you crazy?"

The reason for their response can in part be explained by comparing the institutional environment that engendered such commitment in the veteran members with the environment into which the new members are entering. (See Figure 7.) Figure 7. A Comparison of Environments FOCUSED ON IDEAL -CENTERED CHANGE Anticipation Flexible Meaning making Debate and discussion Cooperation Participation Awareness of progress Sacrifice

FOCUSED ON CONSOLIDATION OF THE IDEAL Evaluation Static Structure producing Assumption and certitude Specialization Clarification Emphasis on current circumstances Accommodation

The environment that emphasized ideal-centered change was anticipatory and flexible—in process. The communities spent considerable time in meaning making activities. There were multiple venues for debate and discussion. The beliefs and values of members and of the group were made explicit and ultimately expressed in a particular vision. Cooperation and collective action were emphasized. The vision was then translated into various programs and members had multiple opportunities to shape them. As a work in progress, the institution's attention was fixed on the envisioned future—the progression towards the ideal, an ideal worth the effort and sacrifice to bring about. The environment into which new members are entering is markedly different. The emphasis has shifted from creation to stabilization. Programs and procedures largely created by veteran members according to their preferences (e.g., Portfolio, self-governance, and the competencies) have become standardized. The responsibilities of members are more sharply bounded and codified. Shared understandings about the mission of the institutions are largely assumed and implicitly held. A Tusculum faculty member underscored this point: 2

I don't think we talk as much about our philosophy anymore. On my bad days I think we hardly do it at all. And I do understand something about why

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we don't because it's been an exhausting nine years and people have tried to do so much, we took on so many changes. But for me, and I think for a number of other people, taking the time to do that was exhilarating, it was nurturing, it was very important and I think it's a way to get at that sense of collegiality and shared vision that I think we have to have.

During new faculty orientation, although the mission may be described, the emphasis is on describing existing programs and clarifying roles. To the extent that change now occurs, it is incremental and focussed on reworking existing structures or resolving current problems (e.g., "We need to fix the competencies.") There seems to be less of an emphasis on the ideal, and more emphasis on the imperfect products that were created to realize the ideal. In sum, new members are invited to participate in laborintensive programs that yield equivocal results that they had no hand in creating. Meanwhile, the veteran members' exhaustion and desire to at least solidify gains has shut down the most powerful engine of socialization and conversion—active participation in the change effort. There is less and less room for new members to meaningfully influence programs and policies and become invested in the outcome. The orientation of new members towards the vision is divergent from that of the veteran members. Veteran members experienced the crisis that led to the changes. They clearly understand the distance that has already been traveled towards the ideal. If new programs and policies have some imperfections, they are still a far cry from the stale, incoherent curriculum of the past. New members have no such perspective. They are entering, relatively speaking, crisis-free institutions. So, what they notice are the discrepancies between the professed ideal and the current reality. In some cases this has led to cynicism. One new faculty member remarked: On paper it sounded great. To the point where, to be perfectly honest with you, I said, this place has to be great, I believe in education like that. So I applied for the position. [...] I still think it's a great idea. If it happens, it will be a great idea! I don't see it happening. Anything. Which is a big drag, in some sense.

So new members respond by questioning the "excesses" of the old system. Why not return to the efficiencies of more traditional structures? The danger is that institutions will begin a slow, inexorable progression towards a more generic future. Ironically, efforts to secure the gains that are made and embed them in structures may also lead to a similar conclusion with calcified programs and policies being run by people who had no hand in creating them. Either scenario may well result in a status quo that will be fertile ground for some future institutional malaise. 3

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SUSTAINING C O M M U N I T Y In some sense, what we are presented with is the ultimate challenge for any community of purpose—sustainability. Some have argued that the duration of communities of purpose is immaterial—that their longevity is less important than their adherence to a higher calling (Pitzer 1997). From this perspective we struggle to attain new heights and eventually the journey becomes more wearying and perilous until finally, like Icarus, we are burned by the sun and fall to earth. No ideal is ever perfectly achieved. The changes created during an effort begin to be worn away and in time only a residue of the effort will remain with all of the truly innovative elements washed away. But there is another notion worth considering. It is that idealism is both as ephemeral and as perennial as the proverbial daisy. The task is not to define and achieve a Platonic ideal but to recognize the constantly changing composition of any community and to invite others to come and share in imperfectly expressing that ideal in everyday life. This requires radical commitment to the ideal itself. It means putting the ideal above the structures designed by human hands to imperfectly express it. It means being willing to allow new members to recreate institutional life in a way that they feel is consonant with that higher purpose. This is the kind of community that generates an ongoing sense of purpose and the members at these institutions have experienced it. A LeMoyne-Owen faculty member remarked: We took on so many changes but for me and I think for a number of other people, taking the time to do that was exhilarating, it was nurturing, it was very important and I think it's a way to get at that sense of collegiality and shared vision that I think we have to have.

A senior member of the Tusculum faculty concurred: There's a lot expected of you but there's a good return on that. I've grown a lot as a person as a faculty member—academically and personally from being here and that's the truth I'm not just saying it as some kind of PR thing, it's the truth especially in the last ten years. I've been here a long time and the last ten years have been by far the best. It's kind of the nice way to go out!

One administrator at Tusculum noted: "Our work is definitely not behind us! We are transforming continually and we have big challenges we have to address. I don't think we'll ever arrive. I'd hate to think we'd ever feel like our work is done and become complacent." The fact is that these institutions cannot afford to be complacent. Despite their accomplishments, and they are many, these institutions

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remain, in the words of one faculty member, "small and poor." They are fragile as well, excessively tuition dependent. It is uncertain how they will weather the change that inevitably must occur when the kinder environment generated by the "New Economy" and the demographic boom grows more forbidding. Their greatest strategic asset may in fact be their capacity for change, for a continual revitalization based not on the perfectibility of programs but on the commitment of the members. Complacency may be these institutions' greatest threat because much remains to be done. Harold L. Hodgkinson (1971), predicting hard times ahead, asserted that strategies dependent upon the loyalty of the faculty would be poor choices (Sanders, 1973 p. 6 3 ) . At that time it seemed as though institutions had little to offer their members. Difficult times would inevitably require difficult choices including retrenchment and perhaps even closure (Keller 1983). But the events at these institutions demonstrate the power of purpose. These members were willing to be loyal to an institution whose ideals justified that loyalty. These processes brought about an investment in time and energy which, even if money could buy, these institutions would never have been able to afford. The situation these institutions faced a decade ago is perhaps best summed up in the motto emblazoned on a 1 9 5 7 LeMoyne class photograph. It said, "There is no way without a because." These institutions found a "because," and it made a tremendous difference. NOTES Walsh and Ungson (1991) allude to the subjective quality of institutional life when they describe an organization is " a network of intersubjectively shared meanings that are sustained through the development and use of a common language and everyday social interaction." (p. 60) For a detailed account, see Chapter 3. H. Richard Niebuhr noted this phenomenon among members of Protestant sects. Niebuhr observed that children of sect members tended to be less devout and less invested because they had never been required to sacrifice for the cause. 1

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H E PRINCIPAL C O N C L U S I O N S O F THIS R E S E A R C H U N D E R S C O R E

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dependency of colleges on resources that extend far beyond their tangible and quantifiable assets. Institutional planning efforts and strategies for change tend to be skewed towards the rational, the logical, and the linear. However, Robert Birnbaum (2000), in his critique of "management fads" in higher education observes: " I consider myself to be a rational person, and yet a major argument of this book is that rational approaches to academic management often have not been very effective" (p. 2 7 ) . Such approaches are, in fact, sadly lopsided. Even if the logic of the plans is unassailable, their implementation still may founder on the indiscernible shoals of human fear, resentment, or obstinacy. In fact, all organizations are of a dual nature. This dichotomy is one of the oldest in the organizational literature, it was explored by both Weber and Dürkheim. Simply put, an organization can either be regarded as a family (Gemeinschaft) or a business (Gesellschaft.) Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1972) draws the distinction between these two terms in the following way: "Gemeinschaft relations include the nonrational, affective, emotional, traditional, and expressive components of social action [. . . ] ; Gesellschaft relations comprise the rational, contractual, instrumental, and task-oriented actions" (p. 148). What this duality (and this research) makes evident is that a balance must be maintained between hardnosed pragmatic concerns ("What do we need to do to survive and thrive?") and the "softer" communal bonds that connect us to our work ("What difference are we making in the world and what is my role in this collective effort?") Our business selves revel in intricate strategies and plans that read like automotive manuals while our communal sensibilities long for a manifesto or creed— 117

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some call to purpose. Christopher A. Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal (1994), after conducting research at twenty large organizations concluded: "Successful companies place less emphasis on following a clear strategic plan than on building a rich, engaging corporate purpose." How then can we appeal to the head and the heart? How do we secure those essential invisible resources whose homespun terms are commitment, passion, mutual trust, and hope? This research suggests that the collective pursuit of purpose is a powerful means of securing those key assets. Outlined below is an overview of the major findings that emerged from this inquiry; how a collective sense of purpose came to be created, the promise and peril of purpose-centered change, and thoughts on effective leadership in the cultural realm. I conclude with a discussion of areas of future research. FINDINGS Creating a shared sense of purpose is a complex organizational process— a socio-cultural movement A key finding of this research is that purpose-centered change is a complex process. The task undertaken by these institutions cannot be understood merely as the creation and implementation of strategies for increasing enrollment, reversing a deficit, or revising the curriculum. A central motivating force was the pursuit of a more satisfying institutional life. A perceived absence of purpose (the "institutional malaise") spurred efforts to prompt the board into action, which resulted in the removal of the president. The policies and programs that were implemented revolved around an emergent educational vision. Individuals were drawn to the vision for change one at a time and for various reasons, both pragmatic and idealistic. The number of proponents grew and the influence of the movement expanded only over time. In summary, these efforts are best understood as socio-cultural movements. They mirror the revitalization framework described by Anthony Wallace (1956). Ultimately, what the change effort produced, along with a host of new programs and policies, was the re-patterning of the beliefs and values of a majority of organizational members, that is, the creation of a new institutional ideology. These movements followed a distinct pattern. 1. A crisis of purpose: An "institutional malaise" (e.g., increased infighting, privation, lack of coordination) led to the conviction that the institution had become stagnant. As one faculty member remarked: "There was just this sense that the institution was being frittered away." This prompted a number of individuals to begin seeking one another out.

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2. Rejection of the status quo and building the consensus for change: Eventually the consensus emerged that the status quo had to end. This eventually led proponents of change (largely faculty members) to seek the removal of the long-standing and non-responsive president. It also opened up the opportunity to begin imagining in what direction the institution ought to proceed next. 3 . Arriving at a new vision: The shared values and goals of various constituents began to surface during the presidential search, revisiting the founding purpose and other factors. 4. Birth of a movement: From these conversations emerged a group of "true believers" who were wholly dedicated to realizing the new vision. 5. Implementing the vision: The true believers garnered support for the implementation of the vision using a variety of strategies, including co-opting ideas of influential fence sitters, providing multiple venues for individuals to participate in (and influence) the new policies and programs, and even subtly altering the vision itself to accommodate a broader and more heterogeneous group of adherents. 6. Realizing the vision and the social construction of success: Finally, the process of implementing new programs and policies in an attempt to realize the vision led to the emergence of a new, coherent set of beliefs and values about institutional life. A movement gains momentum over time The concept of organizational change as a socio-cultural movement is important because it underscores the fact that such change occurs one individual at a time. This research also reveals much about how new members were drawn to the cause. These movements began with a small group of like-minded individuals who believed their institution was capable of accomplishing great things—the "true believers." This group provided much of the initial leadership and supplied the time and energy necessary to move the change effort forward. Although organizational researchers have pointed to the efficacy of such groups (e.g., a "guiding coalition" (Kotier 1996) or a "Transition Management Team" (Duck 1993)), what set the "true believers" apart was that they were not necessarily drawn from the hierarchical apex. Indeed, the only requirement of a "true believer" was zeal for the vision. They spent a great deal of time advocating for it and speaking with other individuals about the need for change. They were able to drawn in individuals who also believed that change was need-

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ed. These people (the supporters) became involved for largely pragmatic reasons—they felt the institution had to change in order to survive. Many were initially ambivalent about the new "vision." The "fence sitters" were individuals undecided about whether to get involved (often because they were skeptical about whether any change would occur at all, what Duck (1993) calls "change survivors"). Over time, as the change effort began to yield some concrete successes, members of the fence sitters began to join the effort, albeit for pragmatic reasons (they wanted a say in how the organization was going to change!) They therefore entered the ranks of the "supporters." Even more interesting, many of the pragmatic supporters, after having invested time and effort in the change effort, came to believe in the new vision and became "true believers." Thus, participation in the change effort proved a vital engine of socialization. Institutional mission or purpose is an evolving construct. Implicit in much of the literature on mission is the idea that a mission is a particular idea that is widely embraced and holds constant. These cases, however, illustrate that a sense of purpose evolves and comes to be embraced over time. Further, a key reason why the vision is able to attract ever-increasing numbers of adherents is that it shifts and evolves over time. The initial "vision" was a desire to end a malignant status quo. After the president had gone (which symbolized the dismantling of the roadblock to change), discussions began, not only about what the institution should do, but what it should become. The visions that eventually emerged were informed by several sources: • The presidential search: Finding a new president inevitably raised the question of what kind of leader the institution needed. The candidates that prevailed had symbolic resonance for these communities. Their previous experiences were representative of the type of change that many felt was needed. For example, Irving McPhail was Ivy League educated, committed to the liberal arts and had spearheaded a curricular reform effort. For the board and faculty at LeMoyneOwen, he symbolized a movement away from the co-op program and experiential education. • The founding purpose of the institution: Burton Clark (1972) has eloquently noted the first importance of an institution's history—the "saga" or story helps teach and reinforce why the institution is unique and special. At these institutions, the saga had been lost. It no longer informed the contemporary understanding of the institution's mission. Recovering the historic purpose proved critically important, however, for

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two reasons. First, everyone accepted the founding purpose as legitimate. No one questioned the efficacy of reviving it. However, taken literally, it was anachronistic. They required translation to fit current circumstances. The founding purpose acted as a kind of institutional Rorschach test, inviting institutional members to interpret what it might mean and in the process come to consensus about core values, interests, and needs. Not all elements of the founding purpose were preserved, however. Tusculum had twin purposes, the Civic Arts and Christian education. The contemporary formulation caused the former to advance and the latter to recede, in part because the Civic Arts was a concept that everyone (regardless of their personal beliefs) could fully endorse. • The pursuit of uniqueness: A final factor shaping the vision was a desire to assert a distinct identity. Part of the rationale for the pursuit of uniqueness was an interest in distinguishing themselves from their competitors. Thus, Michael Bassis challenged Olivet's faculty: "With all of the other choices students have today, why should they come here?" The pursuit of uniqueness was also a means of developing a sense of pride among individuals, inviting them to recognize their special qualities—establishing their "bragging rights," in the words of Robert Knott at Tusculum. What matters is not what a mission says but what it means. Critics have argued that statements of purpose are often of dubious value because their remarkably similar and vague rhetoric makes it unlikely that they will inform specific institutional practices. Newsom and Hayes (1991), requested mission statements from 114 colleges and universities and concluded that most are "amazingly vague, vapid, evasive, or rhetorical, lacking specificity or clear purpose . . . full of honorable verbiage signifying nothing" (p. 2 8 ) . This research reveals that strikingly similar phrases, though apparently similar, may be pregnant with meaning that is only apparent to insiders. For example, the three colleges in this study all expressed a desire to promote a "greater responsibility to community," among their students. This same idea was understood, and expressed programmatically, in distinct ways on each campus. • At LeMoyne-Owen responsibility to community was tied to the institution's legacy of service to the Black community in Memphis. In an effort to put this service into a broader social context, they infused Afrocentric ideas throughout the curriculum and highlighted the contributions of Africans and

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African Americans in American history and contemporary life. • At Olivet responsibility to community was codified as "Education for Individual and Social Responsibility." It too built on its institutional history. The first private college by charter to admit women and Blacks, Olivet decided to recommit to this legacy of social justice through an extensive service learning program and core courses dedicated to social issues. • At Tusculum, promoting social responsibility and responsibility to community was similarly understood to be an extension of the college's founding purpose as a civic academy in the tradition of Cicero. Three apparently similar efforts to promote "responsibility to community" were both understood and implemented in ways that conformed to the ideals and values of the specific communities. LEADERSHIP IN T H E CULTURAL REALM Symbolic and cultural leadership in the organizational context is an uncertain project and ready-made rules of thumb appropriate in one context can falter in a substantially similar context for a multiplicity of reasons. William G. Tierney (1988) wisely cautions: The same leadership style can easily produce widely divergent results in two ostensibly similar institutions. Likewise, institutions with very similar missions and curricula can perform quite differently because of the way their identities are communicated to internal and external constituents and because of the varying perceptions these groups may hold (p. 3).

Nevertheless, although specific steps cannot be suggested (because it is not possible to anticipate and compensate for all contingencies) the accounts do suggest that there are certain principles that might inform the efforts of individuals at other institutions who are committed to fostering purpose-centered change. Revitalization is possible The first principle to establish is that it is possible for institutions to renew themselves and that this process has the potential to reshape and reinvigorate an academic community. Wallace (1956) claims that revitalizations occur in a wide variety of social contexts. Wherever individuals become captivated by a particular idea or cause and seek to bring it into being, the

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potential exists for renewal. Clearly not all such efforts are as comprehensive as those described in this study. It is possible for a department or a small group of individuals. Most of us have had the experience of working on a particular project or initiative and feeling as though that work mattered—that the effort was advancing towards some worthwhile end. A curriculum review, a new program or center, or planning exercises offer opportunities for bringing into sharper focus not only what we intend to do but why it is important. At the institutional level, the selection of a new president or the preparation for accreditation hold the possibility for collective reflection and a perhaps a re-patterning of our work and our experience. While many full-blown revitalizations no doubt are aborted or thwarted, renewal is a constant feature of institutional life at our colleges and universities. At these three colleges, it was from small acts of renewal that the full-blown revitalization of institutional life eventually grew. Create opportunities for ideals to emerge and for consensus to be built Effective grass-roots movements offer multiple venues for individuals to participate and become involved. They draw in members one at a time. Similarly, change began at these institutions once there were opportunities for people to deliberate. At first, these were largely informal (e.g., small private meetings between faculty members.) Later in the process, formal structures were put in place to discuss the institution's shortcomings, to suggest courses of action, and to envision what the institution ought to become. These conversations were a critically important mechanism for developing social cohesion and a powerful coalition firmly committed to change. 1. They invited institutional members to express their concerns and their ideas. The degree to which certain ideas resonated with the larger group enabled shared beliefs and values to be made manifest. These conversations surfaced the ideological building blocks of the new vision. 2 . They quickly pointed out those individuals who supported change. This group (which later emerged as the "true believers") was willing to provide the "venture capital" for the change effort in the form of their own time and energy. 3. In later stages of the change process, formal committees were established in order to advance particular elements of the new vision, either in the form of strategic planning groups or other meetings (e.g., Olivet's "vision commission" or Tusculum's "side porch meetings.") These offered individuals a variety of ways to participate. A particularly effective strategy was giving each committee a particular focus. Thus, an individual ambivalent about the vision but keenly interested

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in how a new course was going to be redesigned could be drawn into the change effort. A pattern that replicated itself again and again on all three campuses was that this pragmatic involvement fostered ideological commitment. Many individuals who invested their time and energy eventually came to believe in the vision. 4 . Committees also functioned as ready-made coalitions—they were a means of securing political support for a particular initiative before it was presented to the entire faculty. The committees were able to develop their ideas, formulate responses to potential objections, and develop clear rationales for new programs or policies. The committee itself constituted a block of votes as the proposal moved forward for formal approval. Having multiple groups shepherd aspects of the change effort forward also made it difficult for a small group of naysayers (who could not possible attend all the meetings) to stonewall each and every element of the new plan. Make use of symbols of success Nothing succeeds like success. John Kotter (1996) observes that "short term wins" are invaluable for demonstrating that the change effort is moving forward, proving that all the effort has been worthwhile, and reinforcing the commitment of change proponents while enticing fence sitters to join the effort. The analysis in chapter five points out that symbols of success may be just as powerful as measurable results. Stories of influential fence sitters who became "true believers," identifying heroes of the cause (e.g., the faculty members who challenged the previous administration), relaying anecdotes about how certain students' lives have been changed or announcing awards and other forms of recognition from external groups (e.g., professional associations) are all powerful motivators. Leaders can evoke such symbols long before concrete results are evident. Resist assuming the role of "Visionary In Chief" A vision is a collective project. No one person (save perhaps the institutional founder) has sufficient legitimacy and power to unilaterally assert a fully formed vision. Creating a new vision of an existing community requires an intimate understanding of the ideals and beliefs of that group. At LeMoyne-Owen, McPhail's vision of creating an elite liberal arts institution led him on a collision course with the board of trustees. His zeal for academics led him to conclude that funding for athletics had to be cut in order to provide money for honors scholarships. This research suggests

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that many faculty were supportive of this idea. For the board, the move was too radical and in the end McPhail left rather than compromise his ideals. The danger in assuming the role of Visionary in Chief is that the leader may find himself or herself too far ahead or too disconnected from of the collective. By contrast, Knott and Bassis who played mid-wife to these purpose-centered change processes. Bassis continually told the faculty: "This has to be your plan." Knott too refused to unilaterally dictate the direction of the institution and demanded that the faculty assume responsibility for the academic mission. What Bassis and Knott did do, however, was actively participate in conversations about the direction of the institution. Both seeded these conversations with ideas, hoping that others would appropriate them. However, sometimes this meant allowing ideas to be advanced despite the leader's reservations. For example, Knott opposed and Bassis supported the idea of a focused or block calendar (one course at a time). However, they were willing to yield to the convictions of the majority. Change percolates best with continual but bearable pressure A perception of crisis is a powerful motivator for change. At the same time, a crisis can be overwhelming. People tend to fear and resist radical change (Schön 1971). It was therefore necessary to manage the anxiety level of institutional members. To some degree this happened because the full extent of the challenge (for example, the fiscal state of the college) was initially unknown. Also, individuals tended to focus their attention on the task at hand (e.g., redesigning courses, developing new programs, identifying prospective donors) rather than calculating the sum total of the effort required. Only later did the magnitude of the job emerge. However, there were factors that clearly helped mitigate people's anxiety levels. First, the change effort was viewed not as a sharp departure from the past, but a clarification or an extension of the founding purpose of the institution. This was not a "new" vision but a return to the traditional one. Second, there were numerous tasks both large and small that individuals were invited to take on. No one person or group was asked to redesign the curriculum, instead they undertook the design of a particular core course. Many people working towards a multitude of small, manageable victories proved a useful formula. Third, the president was also able to relieve some anxiety by assuring people that the change would not restructure them out of their jobs. There was a persistent rumor at Olivet that the rhetoric about change masked an intention to cut jobs. In response, President Bassis announced publicly numerous times that not a single individual would be fired because of the restructuring. They might be redeployed, but not unemployed. The obvious pressures for change had to be counter-balanced with efforts to maintain the psychological safety of individuals.

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Expect, accommodate, but don't squash the opposition Earlier, I argued that a vision could be understood as a "deal"—a negotiated understanding of the direction the institution ought to take. Inevitably, any change agenda with a reasonable level of specificity will quickly produce winners and losers. In chapter four, I describe a number of opponents of the visions. Some felt that change was not needed, that old ways were best (the old guard), others advocated a different direction for the institution (the loyal opposition), and a few distrusted the new administration or felt the vision was somehow illegitimate and they were determined to undermine it (the naysayers.) The concept of the "lowerarchy" underscores that a range of responses are necessary for countering the opposition. Engaging the "loyal opposition" in productive debate enriched the conversations and the quality of ideas according to one Tusculum administrator. It also convinced a few opponents that change was a good idea. For others, allowing their ideas to be heard and weighed (even if they were not acted upon) may have prevented a more virulent form of opposition. The great danger in dealing with hard-core naysayers seems to have been the overestimation of their power and influence. Some "true believers" became over-zealous in their "protection" of the vision. They began to demonize the opposition and in one instance resorted to blacklisting and witch hunting. The temptation to conduct an inquisition must be resisted at all costs. Strong-arming naysayers will shut down all debate—not just criticism— and cause foes and friends alike to distance themselves from the change effort. F U T U R E RESEARCH This study raises a number of questions about the nature of commitment in organizations and about the role of institutional purpose during times of change. Although the following list is not comprehensive, it underscores the multiplicity of avenues for future research: Can revitalizations only happen at small colleges? The colleges in this study are relatively small—Tusculum with fewer than 1,500 students and LeMoyne-Owen and Olivet with approximately 1,000. While most of Tusculum's faculty participated in the "side porch meetings" conducted by President Knott, many colleges (and even some departments within large research universities) would be hard pressed to convene their faculty in an auditorium, never mind a porch! However, what is most likely to thwart revitalization at a university is not merely its size—after all, whole societies experience social and cultural movements—it is the difficulty in retaining the attention of a core group of supporters (Hirschhorn

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and May 2 0 0 0 ) . I would hypothesize that only a sustained threat to the entire university would produce an environment that might give birth to a revitalization. However, there are reasons to suppose that renewal can occur in other contexts at colleges and universities. For example, departments or schools often operate as semi-autonomous units (with the emphasis on autonomous!) It seems possible that a revitalization might be able to occur within the bounds of these structures. Thus, if a group of faculty members became convinced that circumstances required their department or school to boldly move in a new direction a revitalization could conceivably occur. Change efforts within departments would need to be examined to confirm this supposition. There may be other institutional means of tapping into the same vein of creativity and commitment that fuels revitalizations. For example, over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in the use of learning communities as a way of creating a sense of belonging within the larger institutional context. Often these communities are structured around a particular idea or purpose. Important questions remain about these initiatives. Do they represent micro-revitalizations within a larger institutional sphere? Does the sense of purpose of their members differ markedly from those in the overall institution? To what extent are they influenced by the overall organizational culture? How is commitment to a vision sustained over time? It is difficult to sustain commitment to a particular vision over time. While relatively few new faculty members were interviewed for this study, their narratives suggest that they are less committed to the mission than their more senior colleagues. Richard Neibuhr observed that the children of sect members were less committed than their parents because they were not required to make the same level of sacrifice for their faith. Are there particularly effective strategies for transmitting a vision to successive generations? In addition to the use of various cultural forms presented in the literature (e.g., rituals, sagas, myths) (Trice and Beyer 1 9 9 3 ) , are there other mechanisms (e.g., selection of new members, orientation, mentoring) that are effective when the organization is in stasis? Related to this is the question of how ideology changes over time. This research illustrates the subtle ways in which purpose shifts as membership changes. Although a robust sense of purpose exists now at these institutions, if they were to be examined in five or ten years, which elements of the vision would remain and which would have changed, and why? How does a collective sense of purpose develop and shift once the revitalization is over?

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APPENDIX

Research Design and Methodology

T

HIS CHAPTER PROVIDES AN OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS AND

describes 1) the initial propositions that informed the study's design, 2) the research design, 3) the kinds of analyses that led to the findings, and 4) the trustworthiness and limitations of the

study.

INITIAL PROPOSITIONS The research questions that initially guided this study were threefold: • How did the interpretive change process unfold on the three campuses in this study, based on the perspectives of various organizational members? • To what extent has the process fostered a shared sense of mission among the members and what evidence suggests that current decisions are made in the context of the new mission? • Does organizational change theory, which was developed through the study of for-profit corporations, adequately explain the interpretive change process at these three institutions? 1

These questions were an invaluable guide in framing my investigation of organizational change and institutional meaning making. They helped shape the initial strategies I used to collect data (e.g., site selection, question protocols). I decided to use a qualitative approach because I wanted to better understand a complex organizational phenomenon. The initial research 129

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questions were intended to capture a variety of data from which subtler conclusions could be drawn, a strategy consistent with a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967). As Glaser and Strauss note, Generating a theory from data means that most hypotheses and concepts not only come from the data, but are systematically worked out in relation to the data during the course of the research. Generating a theory involves a process of research, (p. 6)

SITE SELECTION I proposed a multi-site study for two reasons. First, while investigating a single case might have contributed to our understanding of the interpretive change process, examining several cases, as Miles and Huberman (1994) observe, "adds confidence to findings." The characteristics of a given site may be anomalous. The use of multiple sites allows the researcher to transcend particularities. The themes that emerge during cross-institutional analysis then allow for extrapolation to other institutions in analogous situations. The second reason for a multi-site study is that variations among the sites reveal important clues about those variables that influence the change process. In order to identify the three institutions in this study, I undertook a purposive sampling strategy (Chein 1981) seeking "information-rich cases for study" (Patton 1 9 9 0 p. 1 6 9 , emphasis in original). First, I spoke with representatives of seven higher education associations. The associations contacted were: American Association for Higher Education (AAHE); American Council on Education (ACE); Association of College Personnel Administrators (ACPA); Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U); Association of Governing Boards (AGB); Campus Compact; Council of Independent Colleges (CIC); New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE). I asked each representative to list institutions with which they were familiar that had undertaken broad-based changes—ones that resulted in changes across the institution, not merely the addition of a program or an isolated initiative. I also indicated that I was interested in finding institutions whose efforts revolved around the idea of civic education or "responsibility to community." I chose this emphasis for two reasons. First, I felt it was important to identify a common ideal around which the change efforts had occurred. It seemed to me that different missions might lead to very different implementation strategies, which would complicate cross-case analysis. Second, civic education was an area I knew something about. At the time I was co-authoring a book chapter on the prospects for a civic education movement in higher education (Hollander and Hartley 2 0 0 0 ) . I knew that

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many of these efforts on campuses included the development of servicelearning programs. My own experience setting up a service-learning program at a small college could then help inform my interpretation of the events that occurred on these campuses. The contacts yielded a list of 28 potential institutions: Albion College, Alverno College, Bentley College, Berea College, Bloomfield College, Butler University, Clark University, College of the Ozarks, Dickinson College, LeMoyne-Owen College, Lesley College, Occidental College, Olivet College, Pitzer College, Providence College, Rivier College, Rowan University, Southwest Missouri State College, St. Edwards University, SUNY Buffalo, Trinity College, Tusculum College, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Richmond, Wagner College, Warren Wilson College, and Wesleyan University. I then applied additional criteria to narrow this field further. • The institution has a strong liberal arts tradition: I felt it was important that each institution be of a similar type. Comparing institutions with different foci (i.e., liberal arts and professional training) might complicate cross-case comparisons. • Each institution re-articulated its institutional purpose and restructured the work at the institution to promote that renewed sense of purpose: I wanted to look at examples of change efforts, not identity development or marketing efforts where most of the "change" was rhetorical. • Curricular reform accompanied the change effort: I reasoned that curricular reform would entail the rethinking of the educational purpose of the institution. • Multiple constituencies were involved in the change—at a minimum the president, senior staff members, faculty from several departments or divisions, and staff members: I wanted the change efforts to be more comprehensive than the addition of one or more programs. Systemic change requires the participation of multiple constituents. I reviewed institutional literature (e.g., student handbooks, catalogs, admissions materials) from these potential sites. Eight institutions met the above four criteria: Bloomfield College, College of the Ozarks, LeMoyneOwen College, Lesley College, Olivet College, Tusculum College and Wagner College. I interviewed senior representatives from each of these institutions by phone or in person. These interviews took place between December 1998 and January 1 9 9 9 . At the end of each interview, I asked for—and was granted—access. Mini-cases were written for five sites. Input was solicited from my ad-hoc committee of readers and my peer disserta-

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tion study group. After weighing various pros and cons, I finally selected three sites. I had not had any previous connection with the three institutions. Further, I knew very little about the process the institutions had undertaken in order to achieve these results, (i.e., The three were not selected because, for example, they were exemplars of shared governance or because they used similar change strategies.) Once the final selection was made, I sent a follow-up letter to the institutional contact thanking them for granting me access and indicating that I would be in touch in a few months, once the Committee on Degrees had approved my proposal. ISSUES O F ACCESS Access proved to be more of an on-going effort than I had originally anticipated. At the May 2 7 , 1 9 9 9 meeting of the Committee on Degrees, my research proposal passed. I then met with my committee for my orals. Subsequently, I began contacting the sites to determine a suitable time to visit that fall. In six months, much had changed. In a conversation with my contact at LeMoyne-Owen, I was asked for a copy of my research proposal and told that the president and the provost would have to grant me permission before I could interview any faculty members. It was not until September that I was finally told that a newly formed institutional research committee had unanimously approved my research proposal. At Olivet, the interim president who had granted access had departed for another presidency. Fortunately, I was able to interview Olivet's incoming president when he attended the Seminar for New Presidents at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and he granted me access. Particularly surprising was that Tusculum's long-time president, Robert Knott, had departed in the intervening months. Fortunately, I had also spoken with a senior faculty member when I made the initial contact at Tusculum. He was able to quickly clear my access with the interim president. Once institutional access was granted, I began identifying participants for the study. In order to ensure the interviews were "as representative as possible of the individuals, groups, and situations under study" (Harrison, 1 9 9 4 , p. 68) I developed my desired list of contacts in the following way. First, I identified key individuals by position—the president, senior staff members, and other key administrators (e.g., admission officers). I also contacted at least two people at each institution and asked them to recommend institutional members who would provide a range of perspectives on the change events—people who were intimately involved and those who were less so, proponents and opponents. I explained that they need not tell me which " c a m p " the suggested contact was in, hoping that this might provide a more candid response. To avoid member bias, I also added to my list several members who had not been recommended to me. To learn the

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extent to which the change had become imbedded in the current culture (Schein 1985), I also selected several new faculty members to interview. To assure the maximum number of participants, I scheduled as many interviews as possible beforehand. I sent e-mails to between twenty and twenty-five members at each site. I introduced myself, indicated that I had received permission from the president to conduct research, described the study briefly, and asked for an hour of time to conduct the interview. Approximately three-quarters of the participants responded to this initial e-mail. The majority of the remaining members replied after a follow up email was sent. Ultimately, only two members failed to respond. After several phone calls, I decided to exclude them from the study. I determined the exact timing of the visit based on the availability of key informants (e.g., senior administrators, key leaders in the change effort). Once I arrived on campus, I also used a snowballing or chain technique. I asked participants to identify others who could provide particularly detailed knowledge of the events or who might have a particularly unique or even divergent opinion on what had occurred (Patton 1 9 9 0 ; Bogdan and Biklen 1992). Although the question often resulted in a recounting of the usual suspects, I did add several participants to the study in this way. DATA C O L L E C T I O N Interviewing Interviewing is an indispensable means of gathering multiple perspectives on a phenomenon being studied (Rubin and Rubin 1 9 9 5 ) . Narratives are the raw material from which a better understanding of the phenomenon may be constructed (Brown 1 9 8 5 ; Richardson 1 9 9 0 ; Maines 1993). Before each interview, I gave the participant a memo that briefly described the research and indicated that no quote would be made for attribution without his or her permission. I asked each participant for permission to audiotape the interview. All agreed. I also indicated that I would willingly turn off the tape recorder at their request and was asked to do so briefly once. Four interviews were not audiotaped. Instead notes were taken and written up the same day. This occurred twice because the interviews were conducted by phone and twice because the interviews were conducted where it was not possible or practicable to audiotape. In the end, 71 interviews were conducted. Sixty-four of these were individual interviews with various administrative and faculty members. (See Figure 8.) In addition, I interviewed students at each site. At LeMoyne-Owen I conducted four individual interviews, at Olivet I held a focus group with twelve students, and at Tusculum I interviewed two students individually.

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Figure 8. Participants in the Study TYPE Senior administrators Other staff Senior faculty members Junior faculty members (employed less than five years) Former members Total

LEMOYNE-OWEN 6 3 8 3

OLIVET 7 3 9 1

TUSCULUM 6 3 10 2

1 21

2 22

0 21

I used a semi-structured interview protocol (Rubin and Rubin 1 9 9 5 p. 5) and solicited information from members about institutional life before, during, and after the changes occurred, which corresponded to Schein's (1985) change framework. A separate protocol was used for members who had joined the institution after the changes had occurred (e.g., junior faculty members.) The protocol was a useful means of ensuring that I covered all of my intended topics during the interview. However, in trying to "[understand] the experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience" (Rubin and Rubin, 1 9 9 5 , p. 5 ) , I allowed participants to deviate from the protocol if they wished. As members described their experiences, they frequently anticipated and answered questions before I had a chance to ask them. Often the interview assumed the characteristics of a good conversation. I also amended the protocol a number of times. I added questions in order to cross-check certain facts. For example, once I had learned of a particular policy or event, I inquired about it with several additional participants. This "overlap method" (Lincoln and Guba 1985 p. 314) was also a useful way of gaining multiple perspectives about important issues or incidents. Ultimately my goal was to reach the "saturation point," where further interviewing provides little additional data (Glaser and Strauss, 1 9 6 7 ) . Although each interview yielded important information, in the final days of interviewing, I believe I did run up against the law of diminishing returns. Institutional documents Erikson (1986) notes that a primary type of "evidentiary inadequacy" is "inadequate variety in kinds of evidence" (p. 140). Institutional documents were an important source of data. In each interview, I asked members what kinds of documents might be helpful for me to see. Members gave me a wealth of written materials. These yielded important clues about the institution's evolving sense of purpose. Whenever possible, I tried to collect documents from before and after the change. The documents included: • Mission statements

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• Development materials (e.g., case Statements, alumni/ae publications) • Course catalogs • Admission materials • Accreditation reports • Student newspaper • Course syllabi • Minutes from faculty senate meetings • Reports concerning the change process • Various memoranda These documents were extremely useful for three reasons. First, by comparing documents before and after the change, I was able to better understand the extent to which the articulated mission of the institution had changed. Second, institutional documents such as syllabi of new classes, descriptions of new programs, revised promotion and tenure guidelines, and the institutional budget were important artifacts that suggested the extent to which the change has been incorporated into the life of the institution. Third, the written materials corroborated many of the details provided by members. This last issue is of critical importance. One concern I had about engaging in a retrospective analysis of change was that an official "account" would taint member's recollections of events. Although there were certainly times when members simply could not recall certain details, their stories of what occurred were clearly reflected in the written materials. Field notes During each day, and for a substantial part of each evening, I wrote down my reflections about what had transpired that day. I listed some of the themes that had emerged from the interviews. Based on the interview notes and my own memory, I tried to reconstruct how I thought events had unfolded. I raised questions (some of which were incorporated into the question protocol for the following day). I made observations about any contradictions in member's accounts. I also recorded hunches about how the change processes had occurred. At the end of each visit, I drafted a case study to serve as a reference. Data management and analysis The interviews were transcribed and stored electronically. Printed transcripts were placed into binders, one for each institution. The transcripts, the institutional literature and the field notes constituted the data set. To initiate the analysis, I did "multiple readings of the entire set of field notes"

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(Erikson, 1986 p. 149). Then, I developed a table using three major coding categories or domains (Spradley 1979) that corresponded to Schein's threestage change process (i.e., unfreezing, change, refreezing). Of course, coding is an inductive process and changes as the analysis moves forward and patterns emerge (Rubin and Rubin 1995). It quickly became apparent that additional domains were needed since some data fell outside of the three stages. I added two more domains—"Pre-change" and "Today." Under each of the five domains I began listing themes and indicating where evidence of those themes might be found using initials of participants and page numbers from the transcribed interviews. (See Figure 9.) Figure 9. Example of Emergent Themes Template

Pre-change Glory years (ST 1, W X 5 , JK 11) Deep distrust (RV 5 , GH 6) Low morale (AB 4 , EF 5, HI 12)

Unfreezing Committees (BC 5, CD 14) Naysayer (AB 2 , QR 8, KL 14, RS 7)

Change Committees (BC 5, CD 1 4 , J K 9 ) Turnover in faculty (FG 4, KL 12, NO 9) Naysayer (AB 2, QR 8, DE 9)

Refreezing Turnover in faculty (FG 4, KL 12, NO 9) Naysayer (QR 2 , LM8)

Today Financial (ST 1, W X 5 , JK 11)

As sub-themes were added to each of the five domains, it quickly became evident that Schein's framework, though a logical way of thinking about change (i.e., chronologically) had some important limitations. First, many themes defied categorization or seemed to fit into multiple categories. For example, committees were a means of both getting people to realize the need for the change (unfreezing) and implementing the change strategy (change). A theme that cut across several categories was the presence of naysayers. What became clear was that the processes at these institutions had been far more fluid and idiosyncratic than Schein's framework allowed for. Therefore, I moved away from the framework and concentrated on identifying patterns and themes within and across the domains (Rossman and Rallis 1997). I drafted a total of fifteen analytic memos, each of which explored various findings. Sometimes these were formal memos that I sent to my ad-hoc committee or members of my peer dissertation support group. At other times the analyses took the form of conceptual "sketches." I would take a particular theme (e.g., leadership) and list relevant sub-themes (e.g., role of the president, role of the "true believers") and also indicate any particularly relevant quotes (e.g., "Knott's comment on 'pointing the way'"). I would then manipulate the list attempting to understand the relationship of the

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various sub-themes. I then used the "sketch" as a basis for a written description of the particular theme. Finally, I returned to the data and asked myself "Would this interpretation ring true to the participants?" in order to make sure the interpretation was well-supported by the data (Miles and Huberman 1 9 9 4 ) . Once I had grappled with multiple sub-themes in this fashion, I then proceeded to draft a 20-page single-spaced document, which represented my best attempt to analyze the data. I gave the document to my committee and received invaluable feedback. What emerged from this process was the conviction that the change processes at these institutions were indeed far more idiosyncratic than the rational change models presented in the literature. Ultimately, I concluded that other social science theories (e.g., Wallace's revitalization framework and the literature on Utopian communities) held promise as useful overarching frameworks for describing these processes. Analysis of member beliefs: A case in point Data analysis also continued as the dissertation was written. One such example was the analysis of member beliefs before and after the change efforts. In order to identify member beliefs I utilized the codes to find statements made by multiple institutional members about a particular topic (e.g., relationship to the president, sense of the future). Where possible, I attempted to identify specific behaviors relating to a particular belief. For example, many members asserted "we work collaboratively," and the extensive use of committees and the faculty's assumption of the academic dean's duties at Tusculum describe specific behaviors that seem to support the underlying belief. Finally, in each case I attempted to find evidence that suggested the assertions were not widely shared. Although there were a few cases where members made contrary statements, the beliefs seemed well supported by the data and would, in my view, have been accepted by the majority of members. Trustworthiness and limitations of the study One of the great limitations of a retrospective study is that human memories are fallible. As psychologist John Kotre (1996) notes: Alterations and fabrications in memory add up to what... psychologists today call reconstruction. The idea is that memories don't sit inadvertently in our minds the way they do on an audiotape or the shelves of a library. They are constantly refashioned, (p. 37)

Weick (1995) also notes the tendency of humans to make sense retro-

138

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spectively of events that are chaotic or confusing by simplifying them into easily articulated narrative. The question, then, is how can we confirm our findings? The trustworthiness of this qualitative study rests on triangulation of data (Patton 1990) and interpretations of that data by many people. As mentioned earlier, the triangulation of data was accomplished by using member checks and by comparing the institutional literature with the narrative accounts. And, although I take full responsibility for the interpretation of the data, I also recognize that it has been shaped and sharpened by members of my ad-hoc committee of readers and my peer dissertation study group. Both of these groups have been kept abreast of my ongoing analysis through memos and meetings and have frequently offered valuable input. M y analytic memos have been firmly grounded in the data with assertions accompanied by verbatim quotes that I felt were representative of sentiments expressed by multiple members. I constantly subjected myself to self-generated skepticism and doubt. "Is this really what happened? Would members accept this assertion?" I returned to my data time and again wallowing in regular "data baths" in order to remain intimately connected to the accounts of the members as I framed my argument. It is important to note, as with any such study, that the data collected are never fully represented in the final product. As a director wades ankledeep through spliced film on the way out of the cutting room, the qualitative researcher leaves stories behind. Choices are inevitably made. There is an unavoidable subjectivity to this selection process. Nevertheless, I have attempted to present an analysis that accurately represents the phenomena at these three institutions. NOTE Chaffee (1984) uses the term "interpretive work" to refer to decision-making that conforms to the institutional mission. 1

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Index

Abravanel, Harry, 6 3 , 7 0 , 7 1 , 7 3 , 82 American Missio nary Asso ciatio n, 17 Antioch Co llege, 2 9 , 5 5 , 80 Argyris, Christo pher, 7 7 Austin, Ann Ε., 8, 10

Brown, R.H., 130 Burns, James McGrego r, 9 7 Burtchell, James T., 81 Carlin, James Ε, 4 Catawba Co llege, 3 0 , 81 Chaffee, Ellen Earle, 7, 8, 14, 18 change dangers o f, 13 dark side o f, 4 0 - 4 3 hierarchy o f, 5 7 life cycle o f, 4 4 , 4 9 movements, as religio us revivals, 49 Chein, I., 128 Churchill, Winsto n, 82 Cicero, 3 2 , 3 4 , 5 6 , 122 Civic Arts, at Tusculum, 3 2 - 3 4 , 4 1 , 57, 6 3 , 6 7 , 7 0 , 7 1 , 82, 1 0 4 - 5 , 1 1 1 , 121 Clark, Burto n, 8, 10, 54, 120 Cohen, Michael D., 14, 5 5 , 76 commitment mechanisms, 9 community, relatio nship o f institutio ns to, 106 community,relationship o f institutio ns to, 121 competencies, 3 5 , 67, 6 8 , 1 0 2 - 3 , 1 0 8 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 3 , 114 consensus fo r change, 2 8 , 3 4 , 5 0 , 53-57, 119 culture. See o rganizatio nal culture

Balch, Hezekiah, 18 Bassis, Michael, 2 0 , 2 9 - 3 1 , 3 4 , 36, 4 0 - 4 2 , 4 5 , 55, 56, 59, 60, 69, 7 0 , 72, 80, 8 1 , 8 5 , 9 0 - 9 4 , 1 1 0 , 1 2 1 , 125 Bayh-Dole Act, 4 beliefs. See also ideo lo gy AbravanePs typo lo gy o f, 7 0 - 7 1 analysis o f, 133 as distinguished fro m values, 65 potency o f, 75 systems o f, 6 6 - 7 0 belongingness, 6 3 Beyer, Janice M., 8, 11, 12, 1 3 , 5 1 , 127 Biklen, Sari Kno pp, 130 Birnbaum, Ro bert, 14, 76, 1 1 7 Blumenstyk, Go ldie, 4 Bogdan, Ro bert C , 130 Bolman, Lee G., 13, 77 Bossert, Steven, 14 Boyer, Ernest, 8 Breneman, David, 5, 7, 18, 66 Brewer, Joseph, 17 Brown, L.David, 77, 83

145

Index

146 Dalton, Melville, 89 data collection, 1 3 0 ­ 3 3 Davies, Gordon.K., 8 Deal, Terrence E., 1 2 , 1 3 , 77 Delucchi, Mich ael, 7, 8, 18, 66 "devil's bargain," 2 2 , 2 6 , 5 1 , 5 2 , 5 3 , 69, 71, 72, 7 7 , 1 0 4 Diani, Mario, 6 3 , 88 Doak, Samuel, 18 Doctorow, E.L., 15 DuBois sch olars, 3 5 , 4 5 Duck, Jeanie Daniel, 1 1 9 , 1 2 0 dynamic conservatism, Sch ön's model of, 84 economic forces, 1 0 7 as impetus for ch ange, 5 0 detracting quality of, 4 , 6 ­ 7 economic revival, 61 "Education for Individual and Social Responsibility," 3 4 , 4 1 , 57, 1 2 2 Edelman, Murray, 8 3 , 8 8 , 89 enrollment­driven strategies, 7 Erikson, Frederick, 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 faculty dissatisfaction, 5 2 Feldman, M.S., 10 fence­sitters, 37, 3 9 ­ 4 0 , 4 5 , 5 7 ­ 5 9 , 87, 9 1 , 1 1 9 , 1 2 0 , 1 2 4 Ford, Ford Maddox, 18 French, Joh n R.P, 76 future research , 1 2 6 ­ 2 7 Garfield, James, 5 Geertz, Clifford, 1 1 , 6 6 Glaser, Barney, 1 2 8 , 131 Guba, Egon G., 131 Hartley, Matth ew, 1 2 9 Hawthorne studies, 8 Hayes, C.Ray, 8, 121 Heifetz, Ronald, 83 hierarchy of ch ange. See ch ange, h ier­ archy of Hirschhorn, Larry, 1 2 6 Hollander, Elizabeth , 1 2 9 Hopkins, Mark, 5 Huberman, A. Mich ael, 1 2 8 , 1 3 3 Humphrey, Lucinda, 17

ideology, 5 0 , 86. See also beliefs as political weapon, 91 defined, 6 5 of "visionary" organizations, 10 struggles over, 1 3 , 3 7 ­ 4 0 , 89, 9 7 information, power of, 7 7 institutional culture. See organization­ al culture institutional malaise, 2 0 , 2 1 ­ 2 4 , 4 9 , 50, 53, 6 4 , 1 1 4 , 1 1 8 Jonsson, S.A., 51 Judeo­Christian values, 6 0 , 82 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, 3, 9, 2 0 , 6 3 , 64, 65, 7 6 , 1 0 8 , 1 1 7 Keller, George, 6, 8, 1 8 , 1 1 6 Kennedy, Alan Α., 12, 13 King, Dr. Martin Luth er, Jr., 5 7 Kirp, David L., 4 Knott, Robert, 2 0 , 2 1 , 2 6 , 2 9 ­ 3 3 , 3 5 , 4 3 , 5 5 , 5 6 , 6 1 , 6 9 , 72, 77, 8 1 , 91, 106, 121, 125, 1 2 6 , 1 3 0 , 133 Knox, William E., 7 Kolb, Mary 7 Kotre, John, 1 3 3 Kotter, Joh n P., 8, 77, 80, 1 1 9 , 1 2 4 Kuh, George D., 11 Lazerson, Marvin, 4 leadership, 1 3 ­ 1 4 , 1 2 2 ­ 2 6 LeMoyne, Dr. Francis Julius, 17 LeMoyne­Owen College "Beacon of Hope" th eme at, 3 4 , 57, 63, 72 beliefs at, 6 6 ­ 7 0 competencies at, 1 0 2 dissent at, 37, 4 2 economic revival of, 61 end of ch ange effort at, 4 4 evidence of success at, 4 3 faculty dissatisfaction at, 5 2 history of, 17 hope for th e future at, 1 1 5 ideological sh ifts at, 7 2 impetus for ch ange at, 2 4 implementation of vision at, 35 information gap at, 7 7

Index lack of dissent at, 84, 85 pragmatism at, 1 0 9 presidential leadership at, 3 1 , 3 4 , 40 presidential search at, 2 8 - 3 0 pride in change effort of, 6 1 - 6 2 , 105 programmatic changes at, 8 0 programmatic improvements at, 6 0 reclaiming history of, 56 relationship to Black community, 3 3 , 121 seeds of change at, 2 1 - 2 3 signs of success at, 1 0 2 timeline of major events, 2 0 Levine, Arthur, 18 Lewin, Kurt., 4 9 , 76 liberal arts as framework, 10 institutions as bellwethers of change, 5, 6, 18 dual nature of, 1 1 7 - 1 1 8 erosion of mission at, 6 - 7 Lincoln, Yvonna S., 131 Lindsay, Paul, 7 "lowerarchy," 8 6 - 9 0 Lundin, R.A., 51 Lutz, Frank W., 9 7 Maines, David R, 1 3 0 March, James G., 8, 14, 2 0 , 5 5 , 76 Marchese, Theodore, 4 market forces. See economic forces Marsden, George M., 81 Martin, warren Bryan, 6, 10 May, Linda, 1 2 7 McPhail, Irving, 2 0 , 2 1 , 2 9 , 30, 3 1 , 33, 35, 4 1 - 4 3 , 54-57, 60, 61, 6 8 , 6 9 , 72, 86, 9 1 , 106, 120, 124,125 Mechanic, David, 7 6 meta-ideology. See beliefs; ideology Metzoff, Earl, 2 1 , 2 3 , 2 6 , 27, 77, 111 Miles, Matthew B., 128, 133 Mintzberg, Henry, 9 mission. See also vision as distinguished from vision, 9-10 erosion of, 6 - 7

147 importance of, 9-11 making as a political act, 75 as evolving construct, 1 2 0 as institutional revitalization, 49-73 as socio-cultural movement, 6 2 - 7 3 , 118 challenges of, 7-9 complexity of, 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 1 8 , 125 statements, skepticism toward, 121 statements,skepticism toward, 7 - 8 sustainability of, 1 1 5 , 127 Morris, Donald, 2 1 , 2 2 , 2 5 , 2 6 , 77, 78, 95 Nanus, Burt, 9 naysayers, 3 7 - 4 2 , 4 1 , 4 5 , 5 7 - 5 9 , 80, 82, 84, 8 7 - 9 1 , 9 3 , 97, 9 8 , 124, 126,133 Newell, L. Jackson, 3 Newsom, Walter, 8, 121 Noble, David F., 4 Oberlin College, 17 O'Brien, J.L., 81 Ogawa, Rodney T., 14 Olivet College "Education for Individual and Social Responsibility" at, 41 AAUP censure of, 21 beliefs at, 6 6 - 7 0 culture of change at, 58 dissent at, 4 1 , 8 4 , 8 7 economic revival of, 61 end of change effort at, 4 4 evidence of success at, 4 3 faculty dissatisfaction at, 5 2 history of, 1 7 - 1 8 ideological shifts at, 71 impetus for change at, 2 5 implementation of vision at, 3 5 - 3 6 information gap at, 7 7 lack of presidential leadership at, 51 portfolio program at, 36, 4 4 , 4 5 , 60, 65, 67, 68, 9 1 , 1 0 3 , 1 1 0 pragmatism at, 1 0 9 presidential leadership at, 3 1 , 4 0 ,

148 5 4 , 7 2 , 80, 81 presidential search at, 2 8 - 3 0 , 54 pride in change effort of, 6 1 , 105 programmatic improvements at, 6 0 racial tensions at, 2 8 relationship to community, 1 0 6 , 122 seeds of change at, 2 1 - 2 3 signs of success at, 1 0 3 tenure at, 21 timeline of major events, 2 0 witch-hunting at. See witch-hunting at Olivet Olivet Plan, 3 6 , 4 2 , 4 5 , 5 9 , 84, 8 5 , 9 1 , 9 2 , 9 3 , 9 5 , 9 6 , 98 Olsen, Johan, 8 opposition. See lowerarchy; naysayers organizational culture, 1 1 - 1 2 , 5 1 , 6 6 complexity of, 4 9 new members' effect on, 4 5 , 113-14, 127 Ouchi, William G., 10, 1 1 , 12 Patton, Michael Q., 1 2 8 , 1 3 0 , 134 Peters, Thomas J . , 12 Pettigrew, Andrew, 9, 10 Pitzer, Donald E., 3, 115 Pondy, Louis, 19 portfolio. See Olivet College, portfolio program at power, types of, 76-77 pragmatism, 1 0 9 Presbyterian Church, 1 8 , 81 presidential leadership, 1 3 - 1 4 , 2 1 - 2 2 , 3 1 - 3 4 , 40, 55, 72, 80-82, 124-25 lack of, 5 1 - 5 2 , 5 4 , 78 problems of, 21 presidential search process, 2 0 , 2 8 - 3 0 , 5 0 , 5 4 , 6 3 , 7 9 , 8 3 , 1 1 9 , 120 pride in change, 6 0 - 6 2 programmatic improvements, 6 0 purpose. See mission; vision racial tensions, 2 8 , 5 2 , 1 0 4 , 1 0 6 Raven, Bertram, 76 revitalization framework (Wallace), 6 2 - 6 5 , 7 6 , 1 0 1 , 1 1 8 , 1 2 2 , 133

Index Rice, R.Eugene, 8, 10 Richardson, L., 1 3 0 Rubin, Herbert J . and Irene S., 1 3 0 , 131, 132 Sandburg, Carl, 18 Sanders, Irwin, 9, 116 Schein, Edgar, 10, 1 1 , 13, 2 2 , 4 4 , 4 9 , 51, 63, 65, 76, 130, 131, 132, 133 Schön, D.A., 77, 84, 1 2 5 Selznick, Philip, 10 Shipherd, John J . , 17 Shortell, S.M., 81 site selection, 19 Smith, Virginia, 18 status quo maintenance of, 7 7 rejection of, 6 4 , 7 9 , 1 1 9 risk of a new, 1 1 4 Stein, Gertrude, 18 Strauss, Anselm, 1 2 8 , 131 study limitations, 133 success social construction of, 1 0 1 - 1 6 value of, 1 0 8 , 124 Tierney, William G., 8, 1 1 , 122 timeline of major events, 2 0 Total Quality Management, 83 Townsend, Barbara K., 3 Trice, Harrison M., 8 , 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 3 , 5 1 , 127 true believers, 14, 3 0 , 37, 3 9 , 4 4 , 4 6 , 5 0 , 5 7 - 5 9 , 6 3 , 6 4 , 80, 8 9 , 9 8 , 119, 1 2 3 , 1 2 4 , 1 2 6 , 133 Tusculum College beliefs at, 6 6 - 7 0 betterment of life at, 1 0 4 competencies at, 1 0 3 dissent at, 3 8 , 4 1 , 8 4 , 8 7 economic difficulties at, 50 economic revival of, 61 end of change effort at, 4 5 evidence of success at, 4 3 faculty dissatisfaction at, 52 history of, 18 ideological shifts at, 7 1 , 8 1 - 8 3

Index impetus for change at, 2 6 implementation of vision at, 3 4 - 3 5 information gap at, 7 7 presidential leadership at, 3 1 , 4 0 , 72 presidential search at, 2 8 - 3 0 programmatic improvements at, 60-61 reclaiming history of, 5 6 , 121 relationship to community, 106 seeds of change at, 2 1 - 2 3 , 53 signs of success at, 103 timeline of major events, 2 0 Vaill, Peter B., 9 values, as distinguished from beliefs, 65

149 vision. See also mission as "deal," 7 9 - 8 0 , 126 as distinguished from mission, 9 as means of control, 82 as precursor to mission, 6 3 definition of, 9 Walker, Walker, 2 1 - 2 5 , 2 4 , 3 5 , 4 3 , 6 8 , 6 9 , 78 Wallace, Anthony, 6 2 - 6 4 , 7 1 , 7 3 , 7 6 , 82, 8 3 , 86, 1 0 1 , 1 1 8 , 1 2 2 , 1 3 3 Waterman, Robert H., 12 Weber, M a x , 7 7 , 1 1 7 webs of significance, 11 Weick, Karl E., 11, 1 3 , 77, 133 Whitt, Elizabeth J . , 11 Wilkins, Alan L., 10, 1 1 , 12

ISO witch-hunting at Olivet, 42, 90-97 Yale Declaration of 1828, 6 Zammuto, Ray 6, 7 Zemsky, Robert, 4

Index