New Cornell College president looks to grow enrollment, endowment

CEDAR RAPIDS - New Cornell College President Jonathan Brand was a college president in Nebraska last year when a small college in that state closed its doors for financial reasons.

So Brand, 45, is acutely aware of how hard the economic downturn has been on some smaller private colleges.

“It's not just rhetoric, it's real,” Brand said Thursday during a visit with The Gazette editorial board in Cedar Rapids.

But Brand believes Cornell is well positioned to weather the current economic challenges and emerge stronger, with more focus on its core academic strengths. Cornell's reputation, unusual one-course-at-a-time academic model and its student diversity - 83 percent come from outside of Iowa and 25 percent are minority students - bode well for long-term strength, he said.

“The depth of what is possible is so terrific,” Brand said.

It's key that Cornell leaders grow the enrollment and boost the endowment, Brand said. Cornell enrolls about 1,200 students - up from less than 1,000 10 years ago - and the long-term goal is 1,400 to 1,500 students, he said. The endowment, about $60 million to $70 million right now, is not where it should be for a college with the academic reputation and strength of Cornell, Brand said.

“Solidifying the financial base will be important,” he said.

But boosting the bottom line can't be done through reliance on large tuition increases, Brand said. Cornell's tuition this fall will be just less than $33,000, but he said students on average get more than half of that through scholarships and financial assistance. The tuition increase for the coming year was less than 5 percent, and Brand said he thinks those type of incremental increases are what's on tap for future years.

“I don't think the market in general can handle large tuition increases right now,” he said. “Will it require us to be more focused? Probably. It will require more prioritizing.”

Brand, who began July 1 as Cornell president, said he is spending his first weeks on campus meeting with faculty individually and listening to people's priorities. He came to Cornell from Doane College in Nebraska, where he was the president. At Cornell he succeeded Les Garner, who led the school for 16 years.

The type of people who are drawn to the college's one-course-at-a-time academic schedule and the type of relationships that model allows students and faculty to form are chief among Cornell's strengths, Brand said. Cornell officials want to study the one-course-at-a-time model to gather measurable outcomes of student success, in an effort to show the benefits of that system, he said.

“I'm confident it will show the efficacy of it,” he said. “The closer the relationship between a teacher and a student, the better the relationship.”

Rising costs have driven the debate about whether a liberal arts education is worth the money in today's economy. Brand said he respects other options, such as technical programs, but he said there remains a place for a liberal arts education because it provides a broad educational experience that prepares students for any career.

“I think it's the most agile, the most flexible education model you can find,” he said.