Email to Friend
General Seminary dean says school can withstand challenges
Discernment, fund-raising, staff cuts included in 'decisive action'
"The immediate future of General Seminary is not imperiled," the Very Rev. Ward Ewing, GTS dean and president, wrote in a July 2 letter. "Decisive action, however, is not simply called for but demanded."
Ewing said that during a May board meeting, GTS' trustees committed to a three-year plan to address the challenges.
"We must respond to the changing needs for theological education that come as our world and our church change," he said in the letter.
Among General's response is a plan to downsize its staff and part-time faculty by at least seven positions. The reductions will happen mainly by way of attrition and retirements. However, the school will eliminate its full-time sub-dean position, a job now held by the Rev. Dr. Titus Presler. Ewing said the seminary will "return to our tradition of appointing existing tenured faculty to serve as sub-dean."
Ewing's letter outlines the seminary's financial condition, summarizes the school's fundraising and marketing activities, and describes new initiatives such as the seminary's conference center and the progress made in heating and cooling the campus using renewable energy. The letter was sent to seminary trustees in an email on July 2 and was subsequently sent to faculty, students, and staff, according to a July 7 news release.
Located in the Chelsea district of Manhattan since 1822, GTS is the Episcopal Church's oldest seminary.
Ewing wrote that General's annual expense budget has held steady at around $8 million per year with annual revenue of just about $5 million for most of the past decade. The difference is made up by withdrawing funds from the seminary's endowment, he wrote.
"Our endowment of $20 million is too small to fund everything we need to do and it would be wrong to spend it down further," he wrote. "Clearly, increasing revenue is the key to a thriving future, and toward that end this year we have set aside about 10% of our seminary apartments for market rate rentals."
Ewing noted that General's largest financial asset is its land and buildings in Manhattan, "but it was also our greatest liability in that we faced a rapidly deteriorating plant with over $100 million in deferred maintenance." Ewing said General has sealed the critical outer "envelope" of nine of its 17 historic buildings "without which many would have become uninhabitable." It has also remodeled six of its buildings.
Additional steps General has taken or plans include:
- "An extensive market research study" has "demonstrated that there is very sizable demand in the metropolitan New York area for programs on religion, faith, and spirituality, especially for part-time students." An initial implementation of its findings has increased the size of the fall's incoming class.
- A committee of trustees and staff is completing a three-year plan to increase annual revenue.
- A recently completed campaign raised $19.2 million, which provided $5.1 million for the new Desmond Tutu Center and other capital projects, $7 million for the endowment, and $7.1 million for the annual fund. General is beginning to plan another campaign, Ewing said.
- An outside research group has begun a three-phase study of General's educational programs and its relationship with students, prospective students, alumni/ae, benefactors, bishops and others in authority in the Episcopal Church.
"General Seminary in 2017 will be a very different institution than stood here in 1917 and unrecognizable from the quiet apple orchard that occupied this spot a century earlier, when GTS was founded and our nation itself was less than fifty years old," Ewing wrote. "One thing remains unchanged and that is the dedication of the teachers and learners who have been a part of this place, and their steadfast determination to serve the needs of the church in their own day."
Part of a larger trend
All Episcopal and other mainline seminaries have faced rising costs and stagnant or declining enrollments for the past 30 years while higher education costs have accelerated.
The 11 Episcopal seminaries in the U.S. have very few official ties to the Episcopal Church, beyond General Convention's authority to elect six of GTS trustees. Even then, the convention does not budget money to pay those trustees' expenses.
Already this year, three Episcopal Church-affiliated seminaries have made major -- sometimes drastic -- changes in how they operate. On February 20, Evanston, Illinois-based Seabury-Western Theological Seminary announced that the school will stop offering the traditional version of a Master of Divinity degree. In April, trustees told the Seabury faculty that their appointments will end June 30, 2009. The school also eliminated nine staff positions, effective for most of them on May 23 -- a week after graduation and the school's 150th anniversary celebrations.
The moves came after a special board meeting in which the trustees declared that the seminary "is in [a state of] financial crisis that threatens survival of the institution."
Also in February, Bexley Hall decided to close its Rochester, New York, campus and concentrate on its affiliation with Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.
In March, Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts announced that Lesley University, a 12,000-student, multi-site university, would buy seven buildings from EDS for $33.5 million, while EDS will retain ownership of 13 buildings on its eight acre campus.
» Respond to this article
2007
Search
Browse by Topic:
Multimedia »