Dear Sagehens,
Thank you to the more than 180 students, faculty and staff who attended the open campus forum last Tuesday to discuss the potential partnership between the College and Claremont Graduate University. Our colleagues who joined us on the panel appreciate everyone who made time to hear our brief presentations and pose such thoughtful questions to us. Those colleagues—Professor Michael Steinberger and Trustee Nathan Dean ’10—are part of the Working Group leading the College’s due diligence on this potential partnership.
We thought a summary of the forum might be informative for everyone. Between our comments and the questions, we addressed a range of topics. We’ve included some highlights below:
- In any Pomona partnership with CGU, robust financial structures would be established to ensure that no College operating dollars would be expended to help CGU make its pivotal transformation to become a thriving graduate institution.
- CGU is in the midst of making difficult but necessary decisions to establish a new and sustainable financial model before our respective Boards of Trustees make any final decision about a partnership. CGU will make and formalize these decisions prior to these votes.
- No Pomona faculty or staff would lose their employment as the result of a partnership with CGU.
- In the event of a partnership, we anticipate opportunities to integrate such administrative offices as finance, human resources and information technology services. Any such decisions would be made gradually and collaboratively following an agreement. In such circumstances, great care would be taken to ensure that staff in affected offices would not be overburdened with additional responsibilities and that the services integrated offices provided could match or exceed the service that they can currently offer individually at Pomona or CGU.
- Over the long-term—meaning years and decades—we see potential for promising academic partnerships between CGU and the College. Interested faculty members would be invited to help drive that process.
You will find information about these and other matters in our FAQs. We continue to invite anyone with questions to share them on the feedback form available at the website dedicated to providing information on this matter, and we will continue to update the FAQs accordingly.
In addition to the open forum, our faculty held discussions last Wednesday and Thursday. And on Friday, Jeff and KJ renewed the popular Coffee Talks on campus, during which they welcome questions and discussions about the College’s finances and operations. They enjoyed engaging with the students who visited the first Coffee Talk of the semester last week, and we invite anyone interested to join them at the next one, at Café 47 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., Friday, February 6.
We plan to host additional open campus forums about this potential partnership for students, faculty and staff. CGU is also hosting its own forums for their campus community this week.
These discussions are a critical part of the due diligence process now thoroughly underway at Pomona and CGU as both institutions and our boards evaluate the promise and challenges of a potential partnership. We appreciate your continued participation in helping us evaluate these important considerations.
Sincerely,
Gabi Starr, President
Jeff Roth, Vice President, Treasurer and Chief Operating Officer
KJ Fagan, Executive Director of Strategic Innovation