College of St. Thomas: The Growth Years

Founded in 1885 through the exuberance and vision of the young Archbishop John Ireland, the College of St. Thomas spent 90 some years educating young men in liberal arts and religious studies in the Catholic tradition. Its campus is situated on a knoll above the Mississippi River surrounded by a pleasant residential neighborhood and minutes from downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. The institution developed through the years from the original St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, which included a high school, college and seminary, to the more focused College of St. Thomas which in 1971 offered Bachelor of Arts and Master of Education degrees.

Established historically as a Catholic college with strong ties to the Roman Catholic Church, St. Thomas is a diocesan college not affiliated with a particular order. In this relationship, the archbishop serves as ex officio chairman of the board of trustees but St. Thomas is not financially dependent on the church. While early in its existence the archdiocese offered periodic financial assistance, it never contributed to the regular operating budget. Unlike many Catholic institutions, St. Thomas owns its own property and physical plant.

The climate of higher education in the 1960’s and early 70’s was marked by student unrest and campus turmoil. Additionally, Catholic institutions across the country felt the effects of a split during this period among American Catholics brought about by the second Vatican Council. The College of St. Thomas was neither isolated nor immune from those kinds of forces. The 1960's could be thought of as a time of preparation for change at St. Thomas.

At the suggestion of philosophy professor Dr. Frederick Flynn, St. Thomas embarked on a self-study. Using the theme of "Do we do what we say we do?", faculty and administration appraised the role of St. Thomas as a liberal arts college. Surfacing from these discussions were other critical questions:

Were the goals of a Catholic liberal arts college identical with the goals of all other liberal arts colleges?

What were the essential elements of liberal learning?

Were liberal education and education for a career necessarily mutually exclusive?

Were students and therefore faculty spreading their attention over too many courses?

Were some departments making excessive demands in the number of courses required for a major concentration?

Could anything be done about the woeful ignorance of the fine arts consistently revealed by graduate record examinations taken by St. Thomas students?"

After five years, the self-examination resulted in a major curriculum revision approved by the faculty in 1965. In essence, this revision secured liberal arts courses at the core of all St. Thomas majors by restructuring credit and course requirements.

In the early 1960’s, St. Thomas’ fiscal situation was far from stable. When compared to other private colleges in Minnesota, their endowment of $1,134,000 was almost the smallest. Faculty members were working for salaries at AAUP level D and financial needs were an issue throughout the institution. In 1962, under the leadership of President James Shannon, St. Thomas College was identified as an institution with potential by the Ford Foundation and offered a two-to-one matching grant in their "Program for Great Teaching." According to the agreement, if St. Thomas could raise $3 million, the Ford Foundation would contribute $1.5 million. With the encouragement of President Shannon, the St. Thomas administration set their own target at $6 million. At the end of this three year effort, in its biggest fund raising campaign ever, the College of St. Thomas met and exceeded the campaign goals with a final total of $6.3 million (See Appendix 4). The objectives for this campaign included:

$4 million to increase faculty salaries and establish distinguished professorships.

$1.2 million to endowed scholarship funds.

$800,000 for library collections, botany laboratory, a computing center, and faculty office space.

On the heels of this funding drive in 1966, Monsignor Terrence Murphy was installed as the President. This priest was familiar with the campus. He had held a faculty position in political science for two years and served as Dean of Students for one year before being named to the position of executive vice-president in 1962. Given the increased demands that the Ford campaign made on President Shannon, this appointment gave Murphy increased institutional administrative responsibility. After this four-year experience, he was well aware of the challenges that lay ahead for the college.

Early in his presidency, Msgr. Murphy was in a stronger position than any predecessor because of the opportunity he had as executive vice president to develop a productive working relationship with the trustees. From watching the board’s operating procedures, Murphy determined that a new structure would greatly enhance its value. From the time he took office, Msgr. Murphy worked on stimulating energetic, creative action among the trustees. A consultant hired by Murphy’s immediate predecessor advised a restructuring of the board. Specifically, he suggested a small executive board of directors and a larger board of lay trustees. He also stipulated that the board should be organized into active working committees rather than think of their function simply in terms of voting at meetings. At the outset of Msgr. Murphy’s tenure as President, the Board was comprised of 19 members (14 of whom were lay members) (Appendix 5). At their first meeting he articulated that the complex matters of the college demanded the judgment of persons with specialized knowledge. He also stated that the era of relying almost entirely on the judgment of the college’s president was in the past. Following the consultant’s advice, Murphy urged the trustees to establish standing committees to focus on specific administrative areas. At that same meeting, the trustees voted on and approved a new board structure. This included an executive committee, a nominating committee, and other committees concerned with facilities planning, development, investments, academic affairs, and student affairs. Approvingly, Murphy saw this redirection and revitalization of the board of trustees as a critical component in the future of St. Thomas.

The 1960s included some milestones that spurred optimism among the administration. However, while the Ford campaign and generous grants from the Archbishop to settle the college’s debt coupled with gradually increasing enrollments improved the fiscal situation, St. Thomas still emerged from the 1960’s financially insecure.

At the beginning of the new decade, the College of St. Thomas was still committed to the following longstanding mission:

In 1971, St. Thomas still had an all male undergraduate population of 2024 (down from a peak of 2088 in 1969) (See Appendices 1 and 2). Thirty percent of these young men lived on campus and the remainder lived in the surrounding metropolitan area and commuted to campus as full time day students. The bulk of the campus student population was drawn from the State of Minnesota (approximately 85%) and 90% were Catholic. In addition to undergraduates, St. Thomas had long maintained a Master of Education program in the summer for the benefit of teachers, especially Sisters, who wanted to advance their education between school terms.

As early as 1965, St. Thomas cooperated with the College of St. Catherine, a private, Catholic, liberal arts college for women located a few short blocks south of the St. Thomas campus. This arrangement augmented courses and degrees offered at both institutions. Students at either college had the option to register for courses on both campuses. This arrangement gave the St. Thomas campus a co-educational atmosphere.

In the early 1970's, college campuses across the country were in a time of transition including a relaxation of the tensions of the 1960's. At St. Thomas, this particular period also marked the turnover of a number of administrative and faculty positions (See Appendix 3). Key individuals with long term relationships with the College were either leaving, retiring, or in some cases passed away: among them was the death of the Academic Vice President. His replacement was Dr. Charles Keffer. With no prior administrative experience and only thirty-two years old, he was hired to be the first lay Dean of the College and Vice President of Academic Affairs.

During his first year, Dean Keffer met frequently with President Murphy. They talked about foundational values, the historic mission, and direction of the institution, and about ways in which the College might provide educational services for the community and to the populations who were not currently being served. Msgr. Murphy was optimistic that St. Thomas could use its energies in ways that would open doors for growth and development. Msgr. Murphy was also confident that if he put the right people together in an atmosphere of possibility, great things would happen. He was enthusiastic about his new administrator and pleased to see him embrace the potential of the institution with openness and determination. Through their conversations, Murphy knew that this appointment had supplied the person he had been waiting for to help get things going.

Dean Keffer’s first year was a very active one. He had a full agenda from the start. In addition to many individual meetings around campus, the Dean began a program of discussions using the existing College Forum, the Educational Policy Committee, the department chairs and a newly created Long-Range Planning Committee (LRPC) to raise the consciousness of the whole College community in regard to the educational mission and goals of the College.

The formation of the LRPC was a result of participation by the college in a year-long workshop in Management and Training for College Administration, sponsored by a Federal grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. During the 1970’s, the Long-Range Planning Committee members approached their task using the following assumptions based on state-wide trends:

Minnesota State projections were foreshadowing a slump in college enrollments by 1980.

An increasing percentage of students would enroll in public institutions.

The competition for undergraduate students would intensify.

The reasons for choosing college would continue to change as they had since Vatican II, the Vietnam War, and the days of student protest.

The market for Catholic students would be influenced by the status of Catholic grade and high schools. This might mean that Catholic colleges would have to recruit more actively in public high schools.

Potentially, the number of four-year private colleges might decrease.

Higher education would receive an increase in Minnesota scholarship and grant funding, and State aid to private colleges would increase.

1973 Statement of Mission

The LRPC was charged to study and articulate the mission and functions that the college should fulfill. On October 4, 1973, the LRPC submitted this revised mission draft to the Board of Trustees:

Administrators at the highest level expected this college-wide discussion around mission and purpose to spawn new programs. Therefore, it was no surprise to Dean Keffer when people from all areas of the college started to drop by and talk about their ideas. As a result of these conversations, he spent much of the time exploring possibilities for program development. Dean Keffer and Msgr. Murphy also visited a number of other institutions in an effort to acquaint themselves with a broad range of examples. The Dean also did a lot of listening. As he listened, he developed an informed agenda of problems that people inside the institution were concerned about and tried to work at those over time. Generally, Dean Keffer tried to work on everything. He had a sense that there were many things that were important and he tried to pay attention to all of them.

In the months that followed, faculty who approached the Dean with well thought out ideas usually left his office with some form of encouragement and/or support. It may have been the permission to pursue an idea or seed money to get the project started. Where Administration was needed to move something forward, Keffer provided that support and collaboration. Through this process, new programs that met a simple criterion of "meeting a need" were started. Word spread around campus. As the pace of new projects and ambitious endeavors accelerated, there was a story circulating that the Dean had fallen into a Xerox machine and there was really two of him on campus.

In 1973, a North Central Association (NCA) evaluation team visited St. Thomas. In their final report, the team noted two types of concerns. First, they itemized a list of weaknesses that St. Thomas could address quite concisely through ad hoc committees. Examples of these are: undergraduate students concerns that faculty were unresponsive to their curricular needs; professional development and sabbatical opportunities for administrators, staff, and faculty that were insufficient or not available; the college was in dire need of data and institutional research; and the fact that St. Thomas did not take full advantage of its urban setting for purposes of developing new courses, enriching existing courses, and organizing traditional disciplines around community problems. In response to these concerns, Monsignor Murphy wrote a follow up letter to the NCA delineating the efforts of several committees already in progress and the results that had emerged.

The NCA team also described issues that were much larger and deeply rooted in the institution’s tradition. Specifically, the college’s mission and statements in its promotional literature about itself differed from the impression of the college obtained by the visiting team. These areas were:

The emphasis on liberal arts may be misleading. In its own literature, St. Thomas portrays itself as a narrowly defined liberal arts institution concerned primarily with preparing young people for professional careers within the arts and sciences disciplines. On the other hand, the visiting team empirically found that many departments were very mindful of the career development of students who would enter into professions, business and government service and the curriculum strongly supported the need of young people to find a meaningful place in the world of work.

The visiting team also thought that the graduate program was not widely acknowledged as an integral part of the total educational mission of the College of St. Thomas. The traditional arts and sciences faculty did not show interest in or express any commitment to the graduate program. As a result, a gap existed which isolated the graduate faculty and minimized its contribution to the college.

In their conclusion, the NCA team noted that the faculty of the College of St. Thomas did not seem alert to the future reality of declining enrollments in higher education nor very concerned to shape a college that would be as attractive as possible to students of the future.

In 1974, St. Thomas started a masters program in business administration. Dr. Thomas L. Bohen, chair of the department of business administration, was the key designer and had spent a number of years planning for this event. This program was unique in that it prepared students to be generalists by including economics, psychology, quantitative methods, and sociology courses as well as business administration. Confidence in the program was demonstrated at the outset by an endowed chair sponsored by the McNeely Foundation. In the first year, 79 students enrolled. By 1978 there were 650. This process is indicative of how other major programs were initiated during the 1970s. Three characteristics of this process were: 1) the identification of a need by upper-level administrators, 2) a thorough feasibility study, and 3) a decision by the Board of Trustees. Keep in mind that even if an individual brought an idea to the table no further action would be taken without administrative agreement of a need.

Like many other colleges in the early seventies, St. Thomas saw a decline in enrollments and experienced the corresponding budget implications. In 1973, undergraduate enrollments dropped to 1928, which marked the lowest point since 1966. With less than 2,000 undergraduates, there was concern throughout the whole campus about the student population. Responding to this, Msgr. Murphy decided to bring the question of becoming a co-educational institution back to the table for discussion. Previously, in 1951 and 1969 two separate faculty committees had been formed to discuss the possibility of admitting women to the College. The 1969 committee gathered information from 18 institutions that had recently become co-educational. None of those institutions reported having any regrets about their decision. After additional fact gathering, the committee concluded that becoming coeducational would both improve the academic quality and financial strength of the institution. The Trustee committee on academic and student affairs considered the same issue in 1970. They acknowledged the ongoing discussions by both faculty and students revolving around this topic. However, they were reluctant to come to any decision. In particular, the relationship St. Thomas maintained with the College of St. Catherine was very important and the trustees did not want to initiate any action that would damage that relationship or St. Catherine’s itself.

In 1975, Murphy engaged a team of outside consultants comprised of experienced educators to once again investigate the implications of becoming a coeducational institution. Merging "brother" and "sister" schools was a common strategy during this time for many single-gender institutions. Given the successful arrangement St. Thomas had maintained with St. Catherine’s, a merger was among the considerations. The committee analyzed results of surveys from students and alumni. These studies indicated that becoming a co-educational institution would have a minimal, if any, negative impact on the campus. Their report in April of 1976 recommended a merger between St. Thomas and St. Catherine’s as their first choice and best option. The second option was that St. Thomas would unilaterally become co-educational, with the hope that it could continue a reciprocal relationship with St. Catherine’s.

While the advantages of coeducation were becoming evident for St. Thomas, a merger with the College of St. Catherine was not a clear answer. Such a move would change the identity of both institutions. St. Catherine’s had a distinct mission as a women’s college that provided an education that women would not otherwise get if they were attending a co-educational school. St. Catherine’s felt strongly that there were young women who flourish in such an environment. Moreover, many who were involved in the discussion felt that if a merger would take place, the Twin Cities community would be poorer for not having that resource available for women.

St. Thomas was interested in the growth that might come from an enlarged pool of potential students. Although there were no reported concerns about negative impacts of becoming a coeducational institution, St. Thomas thoroughly discussed the ramifications. They were aware that it also meant more than simply admitting women to the institution. There were facility arrangements to be made, curriculum considerations to be discussed, faculty and staff gender distributions to balance. A few women had held teaching positions at the College during the years since the end of World War II, but even by the mid-seventies, there were only about a dozen women on the faculty. No woman had ever held one of the College’s top administrative positions. In essence, a whole culture change would need to take place.

After a decade of important groundwork in the areas of administrative revision, long range planning and restructuring of the board, St. Thomas was in a position to make some critical decisions. In 1976, Monsignor Murphy had a number of key decisions to bring to the Board. First, was the question of admitting women to campus. Should St. Thomas merge with St. Catherine’s, continue the current coordinate relationship, or independently become a co-educational institution? Msgr. Murphy knew this pressing decision would necessarily be made within the broader context of some larger issues. Second, the unresolved tension between undergraduate and graduate faculties prompted a more partisan question regarding how to strengthen St. Thomas’ position as a viable liberal arts institution. The overarching question for the Board was whether St. Thomas could continue its expansion and still reflect its mission.