Coming Together: Strong Integration

Coming Together

By Frank Rajkowski

Strategic and bold. Agile, innovative and nimble.

Those are the words the leadership of the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University Common Boards choose when describing what benefits will accrue from Strong Integration – the title used to describe the two schools’ new governance and leadership structure.

Since January, CSB and SJU have operated under two boards made up of one set of common members. And in March, Brian Bruess, Ph.D., was announced as the first president of both institutions. When he takes office in July, he will find a streamlined, more integrated administrative leadership structure waiting.

“The governance structure we had worked for a long time,” said LeAnne Stewart ’87, the chair of the CSB and SJU Common Boards. “But the world has continued to move at an ever-increasing pace, including in higher education. We have to be able to move at an ever-increasing pace as well. “When you think about two presidents, two cabinets and two boards, and how that worked in the process that surrounded important decisions – we were just getting in our own way.”

LeAnne Stewart Bennett Morgan

“The biggest thing I think people will see is that the speed of the decisionmaking process will increase,” added Bennett Morgan ’85, the vice chair of the Common Boards. “I don’t want to say gridlock won’t be allowed, but under the old model, you could retreat to your respective corners if you felt passionate about something. And most people feel passionate about most things. As a result, a lot of the decisions got to be very hard. “There was always some level of negotiation, or a sense of loss or trade. What’s going to happen now is that the same people will be together in an environment that drives collaborative discussion and collective decisions. And we’ll be able to move forward more strongly and boldly in the marketplace.”

ORIGINS Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s have long shared a unique cooperative relationship. Students have attended classes together on both campuses since the 1960s. Academic departments have been combined since the 1970s, and the institutions share a common curriculum, single academic calendar and identical degree requirements. The idea that eventually became Strong Integration arose out of discussions initiated by the CSB and SJU Boards of Trustees in the fall of 2018.

“The topic first came up when we were talking about what our next steps would be,” recalled Barb Brandes, who was chair of the CSB board until January. “We all saw there is a cliff coming in 2025 when the population of potential college students greatly decreases (as a result of the lower birth rates that accompanied the Great Recession of 2008). Both boards decided these weren’t decisions we could make alone in a silo. We really needed to know what our coordinate team was thinking on the other side of the woods.” “From that conversation, we decided that four or five key members of each board would go to the other and try to explain what we were thinking when it came to looking toward the future,” added Dan McKeown ’85, who was chair of the SJU board until January. “We wanted to know if the Saint Ben’s board

had the same concerns we did, and to find that out you have to talk to each other.”

Those discussions expanded to involve both boards in their entireties and suddenly just about everything was on the table.

“Was it going to be the same?” Brandes asked. “Was it going to be a complete merger? Was it going to be a complete separation? What was it really going to look like as we prepared ourselves for the future? How could we make sure we were as nimble and effective as we needed to be so we could thrive? “We appointed a team to start looking into it and they did a deep dive across the whole higher education landscape. They went out and talked to all sorts of different institutions that had gone through all kinds of changes. They talked to hundreds of people before they were all done. “They came back and said we’re not better as one, because there are unique things about each school we don’t want to lose. But we’re not better separate either. Our strength is our liberal arts education. Our strength is our faculty. Our strength is this feeling that once you’re here, you’re always a Johnnie or a Bennie. “We had to figure out a way to work together to lean into those strengths,” Brandes continued. “That meant the boards had to change, starting at the top. We had to figure out how to listen and communicate better with each other, how to be as concerned about the other campus as we are our own and ultimately how to trust each other much more deeply. And that’s what really led to this single, defined structure that is Strong Integration: a single president and two boards made up of the same members working together.”

Jim Mullen Laurie Hamen Eugene McAllister

GETTING THERE Both McKeown and Brandes stressed this is not some temporary compromise on the road to a complete merger, a concept the two schools discussed and rejected in the late 1960s.

“I don’t think this is middle ground,” Brandes said. “I think we were actually somewhere in that middle ground before. We’ve now advanced ourselves to a better place. “We don’t see this as a temporary stop. We actually think this is the very best model for our two schools, not a stepping stone to something different. “No one is coming into this in a position of weakness,” she continued. “It’s very forward-looking, and we believe if we do this right, it will really be a national model – even if not many schools are in the unique situation that we are to put this into place.” “This will be very different,” McKeown said. “It will allow a single leader to look at the two places, take what’s best about both of them, then go out and own the market for what Saint John’s and Saint Ben’s do well. Our hope is that the execution of those sorts of big ideas will be able to move much faster than it has in the past.”

A key step in the process was securing approval for the new governance structure from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the school’s institutional accreditor. That came in November 2021.

Another huge piece was making sure strong leadership was in place on campus in order to pave the way for what is to come. To that end, board members credited the efforts of Marilou Eldred and Terry Dolan, who were the chairs of the SJU and CSB boards when the process started, as well as the CSB and SJU Presidents at the time – Mary Dana Hinton and Michael Hemesath ’81. They were also effusive in their praise of the work done by current CSB Transitional President Laurie Hamen and SJU Transitional President Jim Mullen, as well as the efforts of Eugene McAllister, who served as SJU’s Interim President from 2019 to 2021.

“I don’t know that you can find the right words to describe how important Laurie and Jim, and before that Gene, have been in helping the boards envision not only what Strong Integration is, but also how to effectuate it,” Stewart said. “They have been doing, and will continue to do, a lot of the work around defining what the administrative structure of the institutions will be and how the cabinet will look. “But they’re not going to make all the decisions. They fully intend to involve Brian in those decisions as well, so that he feels like he has a key voice in shaping the new role he is going to be taking on.”

INTO THE FUTURE Morgan said there may be a few bumps along the way, but in the end, this new integration will leave both schools in a much better place.

“Our faculty had to go through this 40 years ago,” he said. “And if you talk to some of those who went through that, they’ll tell you it took some time but they came out of the process better for it. “We can be together and still be separate. It’s like a marriage. Just because I’m married to my wife doesn’t mean I lose my own identity or who I am as an individual. But the power of the two of us coming together is something far greater than I ever could have achieved on my own, so I don’t know that anything is going to be lost here. I think a whole lot is going to be gained. “Never before in the history of these institutions has a president had at their disposal the power and alignment to essentially drive a leadership agenda for both schools,” Morgan continued. “These two schools have arguably punched above their weight for decades because of the Coordinate Relationship. But you still have never gotten the full resources and energies of both places working in tandem. Now that we do, we’re expecting the new president to build a compelling, bold and distinct strategy for both schools moving forward.”

Morgan and Stewart both said they hope such a strategy leads to increased vibrancy and growth – in enrollment, in academic programming, in the community impact of both schools and in many other areas as well.

“These schools are going to have one CEO in the single president and he is going to run them both,” Stewart said. “(The Common Boards) will be a resource to help Brian be effective. But he is in charge of creating the vision and strategy for the two schools moving forward. And we will hold him accountable toward doing that. “We know this is an incredible opportunity. This is a singular moment in time and what this means for the future is boundless.”