Wednesday, Nov. 20 to Friday, Nov. 22, the College of William and Mary’s Board of Visitors convened for its second quarterly meeting of the 2024-2025 academic year. In a change from September, the Board met at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business rather than the School of Education. It is expected to return to Blow Memorial Hall in February 2025 once repairs on the building are finished.
The Board’s eight committees met individually to discuss matters pertinent to the College’s functioning, and the full Board gathered Friday morning to report back on discussions and vote on resolutions proposed in the committees.
Academic Affairs
The committee on Academic Affairs opened their session Friday morning by passing various resolutions, including a resolution to create the Department of Data Science.
David L. Peebles Professor of Business Scott Swan, the committee’s faculty representative, shared the Faculty Liaison Committee report, where he highlighted the importance of the changes being made to the faculty handbook and the privilege he and other professors feel to be teaching students of the College.
“Few other places enjoyed such an environment last year. We would expect them to be concerned with all the innocence in the world, concerning the wars, the environment, the State of the Union. Their full-pressure answer to these concerns is to focus and learn and prepare for their time in leadership. These strong minds and good hearts help keep faculty here,” Swan said.
Followed by Swan’s report, James D. & Pamela J. Penny research professor and Hugh & Nolie Haynes professor of Law Adam Gershowitz presented the Faculty Handbook revision project update. These changes will clarify the roles of the deans of each school, shorten the old and lengthy preamble and include the new School of Computer Science to ensure its participation in campus governance, among other changes.
The meeting closed with a presentation by Provost Peggy Agouris, focusing on the College’s Strategic Plan.
Agouris explained that with the new 2025 Carnegie classification criteria used to distinguish levels of research universities, the College will become an R1 level institution, the highest designation an institution can receive. To achieve the R1 level, the College needs 70 PhD students and $50 million spent on research, which Provost Agouris ensured the College surpassed.
However, Agouris mentioned that because it is more achievable to be designated as an R1 institution, it is critical that the College maintains this designation by possibly expanding the College’s PhD programs.
Academic Affairs committee student representative Courtney Maynard ’25 raised concerns about a new emphasis on graduate student research, as the College’s emphasis on the ability to do research as an undergraduate is a deciding factor for many students. Maynard was concerned that undergraduates will be left behind in favor of more experienced graduate students and suggested integrating PhD research with undergraduate research, should the College expand its graduate programs.
“I think the focus on undergraduate research is a large draw for students to come here. I know for me personally, I came to look at undergraduate education, I knew that ultimately, my goal was to pursue a doctoral degree. So, I wanted to come to a university that would allow me to get involved in research,” Maynard said.
Institutional Advancement
The committee on Institutional Advancement met Thursday afternoon to discuss existing projects and initiatives related to Vision 2026, as well as branding efforts to boost name-recognition, applications and enrollment. No new resolutions were passed.
Chief Marketing Officer and Associate Vice President for University Marketing Heather Golden presented the College’s revamped brand platform for 2025. Citing survey data between 2019 and 2023 on institutional familiarity among prospective students, Golden remarked that the College is not as well-known as the Board originally believed.
“In 2019, we conducted our first brand positioning study for the university,” Golden said. “And that was an opportunity for us to really take a look at our brand awareness. It was eye-opening for us and showed that we are not as well-known outside of Virginia as we would like to believe. So that has, in Vision 2026, really informed our goal about expanding our reach.”
Golden also addressed the decline of out-of-state applications since 2022. The College’s 9,837 total applicants for the Class of 2028 represents a more than 10% drop compared to 2022, when 10,994 students applied.
In addition to lower name recognition, Golden suggested other causes for the decline, which she says has been a consistent trend across college applications nationwide.
“There’s a couple of reasons that we think factor into that,” Golden said. “Some in our control, some not in our control. Affordability, rankings. Post-pandemic, we’re seeing students tend to want to go to school closer to home. The value of higher education is in question, and we’re seeing that particularly in males who are choosing not to pursue college as a pathway.”
The College’s rebranding efforts to remedy these changes include a new digital advertising strategy called enrollment marketing. Golden claims the College has already seen positive dividends from these efforts since the Board’s last meeting in September.
College President Katherine Rowe then unveiled a new theme of ‘securing national preeminence’ as an institution. She likened the internal rebranding to an interdisciplinary liberal arts model, where each committee approaches the same end goal from a different vantage point.
She believes the new approach will promote collaboration between committees, help address the College’s weaknesses more effectively and build out Vision 2026.
“We had so many strengths that we weren’t aligning intentionally with problems to solve,” Rowe said. “That’s the key to a strategy as I see it.”
Administration, Buildings and Grounds
The committee on Administration, Buildings and Grounds convened Thursday to cover various matters related to university operations, addressing new and existing projects.
Executive Vice-President for Finance and Administration Mike Todd started with an update on the College’s ongoing construction projects, reporting that the College has remained both on-time and on-budget for all components of the Major Capital Plan.
“We’re hitting early milestones at a pace that I’m proud to say is a bit unlike higher education,” Todd said. “We’re moving as quickly as state process will allow, and that’s something we pride ourselves on.”
Todd also announced the College’s upcoming search for a new Chief Financial Officer.
“I’m excited to say that we will be launching a search to fill the senior-most financial leader position at William and Mary,” Todd said. “The new CFO will oversee budget and financial planning, financial analytics, financial operations and reporting.”
Chief Information Officer Edward Aractingi then delivered a presentation on the College’s progress toward implementing Workday, the new online enterprise software platform slated to replace Banner starting in Fall 2025.
The original timeline set for the project is still in effect, with the College currently on stage 2 of 5, titled “Architect & Configure.” Aractingi explained that in the coming months, the Workday team will hopefully begin the full testing phase of every functionality, as well as implement managerial suggestions from the external auditing firm Baker Tilly.
Associate Vice President for Business Affairs Sean Hughes concurred with Todd’s assessment that all active infrastructure projects are on-track. He also discussed the renovation of the 1732 President’s House, where President Rowe currently lives. The College plans to collaborate with architectural experts from across the country to ensure the building’s high preservation standards are maintained.
Lastly, Hughes elaborated on the committee’s two proposed resolutions: the expansion of the Memorial Garden and the approval of the non general-fund infrastructure project at the Batten School of Coastal and Marine Sciences. Both resolutions passed.
Audit, Risk and Compliance
The committee on Audit, Risk and Compliance met early Friday morning to discuss the upcoming internal audit and discuss Chief Compliance Officer Pamela Mason’s report.
Director of Internal Audit Report Kent B. Erdahl shared the plans for the College’s upcoming internal audit, set to take place in early 2025, with some work being completed before the end of 2024. This audit will include investigations into Title IX compliance and an analysis of the Registrar to establish a process to verify ongoing Virginia residency. Erdhal explained the Registrar audit in particular holds a strong financial incentive, given the differences in out-of-state versus in-state tuition.
Mason closed the meeting with her report on Compliance Reports and Investigations from the 2024 fiscal year, which included statistics on reports of discrimination, employee misconduct, and Title IX violations.
Mason highlighted the decrease in relationship violence, which she believes could be attributed to her department’s proactive messaging campaign across campus.
However, her office received an increase in Title IX complaints, including an increase in sexual harassment and assault cases. Mason is unsure if this means these acts are increasing across campus, or if more people are feeling comfortable enough to come to her office for support.
Student Experience
The committee on Student Experience met Thursday afternoon to discuss matters related to student engagement, athletics, and graduation rates.
Senior Vice President for Student Affairs and Public Safety Virginia Ambler ’88, Ph.D. ’06 highlighted that the College was designated “most engaged campus for college student voting.” The designation reaffirms the College’s commitment to the democracy pillar of Vision 2026.
The athletic portion of the meeting included discussions about how to evolve the College’s athletics to compete in a changing environment, as well as how the College can use athletics to attract prospective students.
Financial Affairs
The committee on Financial Affairs passed Resolution 5: FY26 Graduate and Professional Tuition, increasing tuition fees for the Master of Accounting, Master of Business Administration, M.S. in Business Analytics, executive MBA, the Juris Doctor and the Residential LLM (Master of Law) programs. The School of Education also increased the rate for its online M.Ed. in Counseling program.
During the committee’s strategy mapping discussion, committee chair C. Michael Petters MBA ’93 remarked that the board should consider lowering tuition rates, which board member former State Sen. Thomas Norment J.D. ’73 concurred.
“If you want to get at the question of affordability, what we have proven here is that you can’t do the affordability question — you can’t change our relative position on tuition, for instance, by just not raising tuition,” Petters said. “If you’re going to change your relative position on tuition, you have to do something more dramatic — that means you have to cut it. And so that’s the question in front of the organization will be, ‘Is that what we do?’”
Norment also said that some state legislators would like to see the admission ratio for public Virginia colleges and universities be altered to 70% in-state and 30% out-of-state, though he did not see it actually taking place.
Full Board
The full Board gathered Friday morning to discuss individual committee progress and vote on resolutions. Rowe announced that 2025 will be the year of the environment, with the official launch this January and celebrations at Charter Day this February.
The College celebrated the Year of the Arts in 2024.
Additionally, the Board recognized professor of Government and Public Policy John Gilmour, who will be retiring after the 2024-25 academic year. Board member Laura Rigas ’01 expressed her gratitude to Gilmour for his insightful teaching on the presidency and congress which greatly informed her career on the Hill.
“I just wanted to personally thank him for doing such an extraordinary job teaching the students of which I am one,” Gilmour said. “Spending much of my career in Washington DC, I appreciated his practical approach in terms of not just an academic exercise, but how the presidency and the congress works.”
The Board also recognized the departure of Associate Vice-President for Health and Wellness Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Authentic Excellence Dr. Kelly Crace, who will join the University of Virginia faculty next semester.
Student Assembly President Terra Sloane ’25 informed the Board of various initiatives undertaken by the SA senate this semester, including a project to recognize and share the historical significance of landmarks on-campus.
“We’re spearheading a project in the Student Assembly to make some form of living history for the William and Mary campus that we are beginning to embark on right now,” Sloane said. “To talk a little bit about the contextualization of our campus landmarks and buildings, talk a little bit about what we’re named after.”
The Board’s next meeting will be from Feb. 5 to Feb. 7, 2025 at Blow Memorial Hall.
