Feb. 16, 2016

Dear Colleagues:

On Jan. 24-26, I met with the College’s board of trustees at their winter meeting and was pleased to share good news with them about enrollment, giving, strategic planning and the continued development of educational programs and new facilities. As always, the board was encouraged to learn of the notable achievements of our students, alumni and employees―and of the many campus events and programs that demonstrate our commitment to institutional excellence. As we enter our spring term, I would like to provide you with an update related to the recent board meeting and additional campus news.

Summary of January board of trustees meeting

Prior to starting our general board sessions, trustees and College leadership were privileged to host a celebration where we presented the J. Harold and Ruth Engle Service Award to Emeritus Trustee Charlie Byers and Miriam Byers. It was very meaningful to have the opportunity to recognize Charlie and Miriam for their sacrificial giving and service.

During the first general board session, trustees continued previous discussion and explored various scenarios related to religious freedom challenges. Board members also responded to the further development of the draft institutional strategic plan for 2016-2020. (See the following articles providing more detail on both these issues.) The board’s second session included a comprehensive annual report from the Rider Musser Development Corporation as well as reports and action items from the board’s various committees.

Key actions from the board meeting included:

From the Committee on Education:

  • The board approved the revised Term Tenure and Promotion Policy and Process as developed and approved by the Ranked Faculty Meeting.
    • The board reviewed and approved emeritus status, promotions, term tenure and term tenure renewals for various faculty members as presented based on the recommendation of the Term-Tenure and Promotion Committee, the provost and the president. The provost’s office will communicate these decisions to the campus community via the Intercom.
    • The board approved an organizational restructuring that consolidates the graduate programs under its own school, the School of Graduate Studies. This change will have no direct financial implications and does not increase personnel in graduate programs. Rather, this new administrative structure better meets the needs of the College and provides better oversight at this time, given the growth of our graduate student body (currently at 589 grad students) and the diverse types of graduate programs that currently exist and are being developed. Leadership for these programs will continue under Robert Pepper, assistant provost for graduate studies.

From the Committee on Finance:

  • The board approved a “Board of Trustees Resolution of Financial Solvency” that will be filed with Maryland Secretary of Higher Education as part of an annual reporting process that allows our students participating in our online graduate programs to complete their internships in Maryland.
  • The board approved the tuition, fees, room and board rates for FY17 as outlined below, and as previously reviewed and approved by campus governance groups.

FY17 Proposed Tuition, Fees, Room and Board

Current year 2015-2016 Proposed 2016-2017  Increase
Undergraduate tuition $31,410 $32,350 2.99%
SGA fee* $240 $240 0%
Student services fee $590 $590 0%
Room (Double Occupancy) $5,100 $5,250 2.94%
Board $4,530 $4,670 3.09%
Total undergraduate $41,870 $43,100 2.94%
       
Graduate tuition per credit/hour $610 $625 2.46%

* The SGA fee is set by the student government.

 A special thank you

I would like to express my appreciation to the Division of Operations for their outstanding dedication to keeping our campus and students safe and well cared for during the historic winter storm Jonas in late January. Many employees from the departments of Conference and Event Services, Facilities, Dining, Safety and Dispatch spent time apart from their families and stayed on campus to shovel snow, clear roadways, secure campus buildings and prepare meals for students. The Division of Student Affairs also deserves our appreciation for their care and commitment to serving students who were snowbound both during and after the storm.

Religious freedom advocacy update

The Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) continues to lead federal advocacy efforts for faith-based colleges including Messiah. CCCU President Shirley Hoogstra (an attorney and former vice president of student development at Calvin College) is collaborating with the leaders of other religious organizations to make a case for how the citizens of the United States who possess deeply held but conflicting values might develop laws and public policies that will enable us to respectfully live and work together. An important component of our advocacy involves communicating the important contributions Christian colleges make to the public good, as well as our desire to honor the civil rights of all people while protecting the right of Christian and other religious organizations to maintain their sincerely held convictions and standards.

 Strategic planning process

Vice President for Finance and Planning David Walker and Dean of the School of the Humanities Peter Powers continue to provide strong leadership to the institutional strategic planning process. Presently, the Strategic Planning Executive Committee is meeting to establish assessment standards for proposed goals and review budget implications. An open forum for employee feedback will be scheduled for late March to be followed by COE Senate and College Council deliberations. The College’s board of trustees is expected to take final action on the plan in May 2016. Read the current draft of the strategic plan.

Enrollment snapshot

Spring enrollment: With a current undergraduate headcount of 2,696, spring enrollment is looking strong and we are on target to meet or exceed our spring undergraduate FTE target of 2,559. A larger fall FTE and the addition of up to 40 new and transfer students put us on track to exceed our annualized FFTE goal of 2,618 by approximately 20-25 students and we are expected to meet our annual budget goal.

 Undergraduate admissions for fall 2016: Applications and acceptances for fall have been running at least 10 percent ahead of last year. This lead places us in a good position as we enter financial aid season. We are experiencing similar positive trends related to campus visits and underrepresented, honors and international students.

Feb. 10, 2016 Feb. 10, 2015
First-year Students Fall 2016 % to goal Goal Fall 2015 % to final Final
Inquiries 27,256 97% 28,000 27,311 97% 28,037
Applications 2,390 89% 2,700 2,236 91% 2,469
Acceptances 1,825 91% 2,000 1,669 86% 1,950
Active Deposits 319 47% 675 321 46% 691
Transfer
Applications		 136 44% 311 114 43% 265
Acceptances 71 43% 165 55 30% 185
Active Deposits 8 9% 85 3 4% 83

 Graduate enrollment: Overall graduate enrollment continues to increase. To this point in the fiscal year, 589 students have enrolled for a total of 7,622 credit hours and we are at 95 percent of our goal (versus 565 students and 6,801 hours at this point last year). We are on track to meet our budgeted credit-hour goals for FY16.

Giving update

Projections for overall institutional fundraising are trending ahead for FY16. Currently, we have raised over $6.5 million, which is 93 percent of our June 30, 2016 goal. As you can see from the table below, we are doing very well when compared to the prior two years. The Messiah Fund/Operating is also meeting our projections with nearly $1.1 million raised (76 percent of June 30 goal).

FY16 Giving Progress Report

 Overall Giving

Feb. 10, 2016 Feb. 10, 2015 Feb. 10, 2014
$6,581,869 $5,419,394 $6,344,803
93% of June 30 goal of $7,071,018 90% of June 30 goal of $6,028,700 105% of June 30 goal of $6,064, 156

 Messiah Fund/Operating

Feb. 10, 2016 Feb. 10, 2015 Feb. 10, 2014
$1,099,450* $1,161,549 $1,071,605
76% of June 30 goal of $1,441,000 83% of June 30 goal of $1,403,000 79% of June 30 goal of $1,359,000

*Not included in the Messiah Fund is a non-cash unrestricted bequest of a farm

Updates on other key priorities:

  • Campaign for Wellness: We continue to diligently work toward achieving our $6 million fundraising goal for the Campaign for Wellness. Currently, we are over $5.6 million, which is 93 percent of our total goal.
  • Create a Legacy 2018: Our efforts to add 100 new members to the Heritage Society by 2018 continue in earnest. We are focusing on engaging current and former Messiah Board of Trustees members, as well as alumni and friends, who have included Messiah in their wills and estate plans. Just last week, two new Heritage Society members were added, bringing us to a total of 21 since the initiative began.
  • Endowment matching challenge: We are deeply encouraged by the progress of our FY16 Endowment Challenge. For every new scholarship endowment commitment we secure before June 30, 2016, unrestricted funds have been set aside to match the new endowment “dollar-for-dollar” up to $250,000. The last two endowment challenge initiatives we undertook added $1.3 million in total endowment growth.

It is always inspiring when Messiah donors share their personal stories. Recently, current Messiah parents learned of a friend who would not be able to return to Messiah because of finances. Moved by the student’s need, these parents felt compelled to pay the student’s school bill, as well as  establish a new scholarship fund endowment to benefit future students. In working with these donors, it was inspiring to hear them express their gratitude for the education and support their child is receiving from Messiah educators and staff.

Facilities progress

The College continues to make strides in its various new construction and renovation projects:

  • Combined heat and power plant (CHPP): In January, UGI completed its installation of the final gas lines, connecting the campus to the natural gas source off campus. The process of pickling (providing odor to the gas in the lines for detection purposes) has started. Work on connecting the capstone with infrastructure is also underway. The 1000 KW capstone unit designed to provide the College with power is planned to begin on March 7. The CHPP is expected to be fully operational by the end of March 2016 and gas conversion to additional buildings should be completed by late spring 2016. The College is planning a ribbon cutting ceremony for this facility sometime in April; details will be announced to campus when finalized.
  • Winding Hill site: The College has begun renovations to its leased facilities at its new Winding Hill location (just off Route 15 in Mechanicsburg), which will house several programs from Messiah’s School of Graduate Studies. Contractors are currently working on the demolition of key renovation areas, and construction is planned to be completed in June 2016. At that time, graduate faculty and staff in the counseling, occupational therapy, nutrition and dietetics programs will be moving into newly renovated office spaces at Winding Hill. During the 2016-2017 academic year, the teaching spaces for the College’s pending programs in occupational and physical therapy will be completed and used for recruitment tours and other marketing efforts.
  • Fitness center and gymnasium addition: On March 7, 2016, work will begin on the new fitness center and gymnasium addition. During spring break, the contractor will install a construction fence and, due the size of this project, traffic patterns and parking will be changing. Access to the Sollenberger Sports Center will also be limited. Detailed communication for these changes will be sent out in the next several weeks by Vice President for Operations Kathie Shafer.

 Announcing Commencement speakers for 2016 and 2017

Messiah College is pleased to welcome Peter Greer ’97 as the commencement speaker for the Class of 2016. Peter Greer is president and CEO of HOPE International, a global Christ-centered microenterprise development organization serving throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Before beginning his role at HOPE, Greer worked as a microfinance practitioner in Cambodia, Zimbabwe and Rwanda, and earned a master’s degree from Harvard University. He has co-authored eight books, including “The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good,” “Mission Drift,” “40/40 Vision,” and “The Giver and the Gift.” He earned a B.S. in international business in 1997 from Messiah College, where he currently serves as the College’s entrepreneur-in-residence, a role in which he teaches a course in social entrepreneurship and mentors students who have an interest in that area. Peter and his wife, Laurel ’00, live in Lancaster, Pa., with their three children. To read Peter Greer’s blog, visit peterkgreer.com

I was also delighted to receive confirmation last week that Bryan Stevenson has accepted our institutional invitation to deliver the commencement address to the Messiah College Class of 2017. Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Ala. He is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. He has received 16 honorary degrees including degrees from Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University and Washington University. He is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, “Just Mercy,” which was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 Best Books of Nonfiction for 2014. To read Bryan Stevenson’s full profile, visit http://www.eji.org/BryanStevenson.

Good news about Messiah College

Here is a sample of some recent new highlights about the success and recognition of Messiah College’s programs and people. For more details visit messiah.edu/news , Messiah’s official Facebook page at facebook.com/MessiahCollege and the Bridge magazine www.messiah.edu/the_Bridge (the source sites for many of the below news items).

  • Robin Collins, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy, has just been awarded a grant from the John Templeton Foundation for his project, “The Fine-tuning for Scientific Discovery.” The project involves completing the work he has done in the last five years showing that the fundamental parameters of physics, such as the mass of the proton, fall within an extremely small range of values that are optimal for the development of technology and the discovering of the universe. Such fine-tuning implies that the universe is providentially structured for beings like us to do science and thus has profound philosophical and theological implications.  The $217,000 grant is over a three-year period, beginning June 2016. It provides release time to complete a technical book focused on cases of this fine-tuning in particle physics, several articles on non-particle physics cases, a popular book on the topic, summer stipend support for Messiah College physicist Abaz Kryemadhi to help him with the physics, along with honorarium money for other experts to review the work.
  • David Weaver-Zercher, professor of American religious history, will release his latest book, “Martyrs Mirror: A Social History,” on Feb. 25. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, the book is part of the series Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. “An ambitious and unprecedented undertaking, this book brings together an accessible summary of scholarship about the ‘Martyrs Mirror’ with fresh interviews and comments from diverse Anabaptist groups. Weaver-Zercher has a knack for highlighting conflicts and dramas associated with the text’s history,” reviews Gerald J. Mast of Bluffton University.
  • Cynthia A. Wells, associate professor of higher education, had her book, Realizing General Education: Reconsidering Conceptions and Renewing Practice, published by Jossey-Bass on Jan. 11. The book is part of the ASHE (Association for the Study of Higher Education) Higher Education series which provides a definitive analysis of a difficult higher education issue, based on comprehensive review of research and institutional practice.
  •  This year’s Super Bowl provided opportunity for Messiah’s business faculty to share their research and expertise in the regional and national media:
    •  David Hagenbuch, professor of marketing, and Keith Quesenberry, assistant professor of marketing, were guests on WITF’s “Smart Talk,” featured in a segment on Super Bowl ads on Feb. 5.
    • Earlier in the month, Quesenberry’s op-ed, “William Shakespeare Holds the Key to a Great Super Bowl Ad,” was featured in TIME (Feb. 1). His Super Bowl ad research and commentary was also featured in multiple national newspapers including the Miami Herald and the Richmond Times Dispatch.
    • Hagenbuch’s op-ed “What Super Bowl Ads Can Teach Entrepreneurs About Marketing” was featured on Entrepreneur.com ( Feb. 5).
  • Messiah College was featured in Christianity Today’s “The Global Classroom,” an article about how Christian colleges are preparing students to engage the world’s pressing issues. You can read the full CT article here. Read the stories of Messiah alums Hannah Ruth ’12 and Matthew Rice ’15 here.
  • Messiah College recently received two recognitions from Best Counseling Degrees.net for its graduate degree in counseling: ranked #3 for our master’s in clinical mental health counseling, read more about this recognition here; ranked #4 for our master’s in marriage and family therapy, read more about this recognition here. Messiah offers a Master of Arts in counseling with concentrations in clinical and mental health; marriage, couple and family; and school counseling.

 Athletics highlights

Here are some recent Messiah Athletics highlights. Visit www.GoMessiah.com the source for these stories and for the Falcons’ most current scores, announcements and the full slate of team-specific news.

  • The Messiah College swim teams completed the best seasons in their respective men’s and women’s history over the weekend of Feb. 11-14:
    • The women reached new heights of dominance within the MAC by collecting a conference record 832 points to win their third-straight conference championship. The women collected an incredible 12 golds across 18 events, and they swept the special awards as Emily Reale won Swimmer of the Year, Cassie Cotton Rookie of the Year, and Nancy Luley Coach of the Year.
    • The men took third place overall to represent their best-ever finish at the MAC Championships. Dakota Schmalz led 21 All-MAC honors with a gold medal in the 400 IM.
  • Senior Phil Headland provided an outstanding men’s track and field highlight on Feb. 6 when he set a new College record in the 1,000 meter run. His time of 2:35.21 broke a seven-year mark held by Patrick Roach since 2009.
  • Messiah wrestling won the MAC Championship in dominating fashion in late January. The Falcons took six of the 10 individual championships and finished more than 40 points ahead of their nearest competitor.
  • In late January, Messiah Athletics placed 15 student-athletes on the Academic All-MAC teams. In contrast to the MAC Academic Honor Roll, which recognizes all students with at least a 3.20 term GPA, the Academic All-MAC teams are voted upon to recognize the student-athletes in each sport who demonstrate both academic and athletic prowess. Messiah led all non-football schools with their 15 total honors.
  • Messiah women’s lacrosse was picked No. 14 in the IWLCA Preseason Top 20 poll. And in the spring 2016 conference preseason polls, Messiah took the top spot for women’s lacrosse, softball and men’s tennis. The Falcons were second in the polls for men’s lacrosse and women’s tennis.
  • In early January, Messiah College Athletics inducted three new members into the Hall of Honor: wrestler Chris Roggie ’00; women’s soccer player Hannah (Levesque) Leatherman ’06; and field hockey player Danae (Chambers) Hollenbach ’06.
  • In late December, Messiah senior Nikki Elsaesser was named the NSCAA Division III National Player of the Year for women’s soccer. Elsaesser is the fifth player in program history to earn the award, and she finishes her career as a three-time All-American, three-time MAC Commonwealth Offensive Player of the Year, and second all-time in program history in goals, assists, points and game-winners.

In closing

In closing, every day I am reminded of the many ways that God is blessing our community’s efforts. Thank you for your excellent work!

 Warmest regards,

Kim S. Phipps

President