President Roger Taylor

President Roger Taylor’s National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) Speech given February 2, 2010 

Southwest of Chicago
Knox College is in Galesburg, Illinois, 200 miles southwest of Chicago…mainly west, four year liberal arts college with about 1,400 students.

Founders and the Circular and Plan
Knox was founded in 1837 by the Reverend George Washington Gale, and other stern faced Congregationalists and Presbyterians from western New York.

Gale and the other founders drafted a circular and plan for a college and town. Their circular and plan specified that the college would be accessible to students regardless of their financial means. The original circular and plan still hangs on the wall of Knox’s Old Main, where Lincoln and Douglas held the fifth of their famous debates.

I like to say that it hangs there, not as a musty old document, but as a symbol of Knox’s commitment to access regardless of financial means — to this day.

Right now 68% of Knox students receive need based financial aid. About a quarter of our students are first generation, about a quarter from low income families.

TRIO
Like other NIACU institutions Knox has TRIO programs funded by grants from the United States Department of Education, we have two.

Our TRIO Achievement Program supports 160 low income, first generation, students each year. The students receive assistance with writing, study skills, time management, and tailored academic advising, it works. Recent four year graduation rates for TRIO Achievement Program students have been substantially higher than for low income first generation students who did not participate in TRIO.

Our second TRIO program is the Ronald McNair program, aimed to encourage low income, first generation students to pursue PhDs, and consider college teaching. One-third are from underrepresented groups; they receive special mentoring and financial support to develop independent research projects.

Since we started in 1996 100% of our McNair students have graduated…100%! Half have gone on to graduate school, and 20% have pursued PhDs.

For those of you who don’t have a TRIO program and do have enough low income and first generation students to qualify for the grants, I encourage you to explore it.

College for Kids
But let me spend the rest of my time talking about a couple of programs that Knox has developed, programs that provide access and programs that could be replicated at other institutions.

Knox College College 4 Kids, we run every summer for 1st through 9th graders. For two weeks students take classes in the morning, taught by 12 Knox faculty, and 6 faculty from the Galesburg area public schools.

We offer substantive courses, not fun and games; substantive courses from astronomy to Classics to physics; 55 courses last summer. Substantive courses to give the students a glimpse of what college would be like.

We charge tuition of $115 for College 4 Kids, but offer scholarships for low income students. Last summer for example, we had 260 students. About half were low income and 40% minority.

It is fun for me to watch those grade school students earnestly march across campus, back packs on their backs, on their way to college.

REACH Fellows Program
In 2006 we began to use College 4 Kids as a tool to develop the underserved teaching corps. We select a small group of Knox teacher education majors, about 15. The program targets students who are underrepresented in the teaching profession; students of color, men. We have achieved 80% who are either male, students of color, or both.

The Knox students are teaching assistants in the morning, and in the afternoon seminars and workshops in differentiated instruction, gifted education, classroom management are taught.

Let me read what one of our alumni wrote us a few months ago. Muhibo Sharif, a College 4 Kids alum, who went on to be a Knox student and a College 4 Kids teaching assistant.

Muhibo said:
“Before College 4 Kids I never saw myself going to college. It wasn’t a dream. I couldn’t even imagine doing it. After coming to College 4 Kids I felt like this was home. I knew I was going to college.”

Muhibo graduated from Knox in June. She is teaching in a high need grade school in Chicago.

Gale Scholar Program
But my personal favorite is the George Washington Gale Scholar Program, named for the stern faced Congregationalist founder of Knox, and author of the original circular and plan for a college that would afford access to students of all financial means.

Knox collaborates with the Galesburg public school system, and the community college in Galesburg. Each spring we select 15 eighth graders as Gale Scholars, low income and first generation to go to college.

We require strong grades at Galesburg High School, and 20 hours of community service each year. We provide support and counseling.

The carrot: If they maintain strong grades, fulfill the community service requirement, and  graduate as Gale Scholars, they receive two years tuition free at the local community college, and junior and senior year tuition free at Knox. They don’t all graduate from high school as Gale Scholars, but those who do, 100% go to college somewhere.

For those of you who have a community college in your area, I’d encourage you to consider a similar program.

Manning Anecdotes
A couple of Gale Scholar stories. I’m emboldened by a comment I heard from Sylvia Manning last month. “The plural of anecdote is data.”

In the spring we hold an induction ceremony for the new Gale Scholars on the lawn of the old George Washington Gale home. Each spring as I look out at those 15 eighth graders and family members at the induction ceremony, I am moved by two reactions.

First from just looking at them, and talking with them. It is obvious that if it weren’t for the Gale Scholars Program many of those eighth graders would not aspire to go to college, now they do.

More striking is if I had been selected as a Gale Scholar, my widowed mother would have been at the induction ceremony. So would Gram and Gramp, and Aunt Betty.

At each induction ceremony for too many of our Gale Scholars there is nobody there for them. Sometimes, I understand there are issues getting off work. But I also know that too often there is nobody there.

Because there is nobody there some of those eighth graders go home after school and fix supper for their younger siblings, and do the dishes. And we have Gale Scholars who drop out, who drop out of basically a free college education.

The numbers are small enough that the superintendent of Galesburg Schools, and the community college president, and the Program Director, and I, can sit around and talk about the drop-outs.

Three fourths of the time it’s not that they aren’t smart enough, it’s not that they had bad teachers at Galesburg High School, it’s their family situation, or lack thereof.

I know that it is in fashion now to scold the public schools, and public teachers. But some families deserve some scolding, and also encouragement. President Obama has tackled the role of parents in education in his public comments. And I suggest that we as leaders in higher education need to come to the defense of our public school teachers, and encourage parents to get involved with their children’s education.

Autonomy
Finally, the programs that Jackie, and George, and I have described. And the innovative programs that many of you have to provide access and affordability have come about because we as independent institutions are free to innovate.

Knox does not have to secure approval for academic programs from the Illinois Board of Higher Education as do our public institutions in Illinois. We have institutional autonomy to institute programs, institutional autonomy to try things.

And as the discussion of access and affordability continues, as leaders of independent institutions, we need to continue to remind legislators, and other policy makers, and the public, and our own constituents, of the value of that autonomy.

Colleges and universities in the United States have historically enjoyed institutional autonomy. So they can best serve our society though reflection and innovation and a commitment to making society better. The autonomy to innovate, for the betterment of our society, is not merely a cherished value, but a value that allows institutions such as ours to make a difference in the lives of our students, and through them make a difference in the lives of our communities.

Institutional autonomy is worth speaking out about.