Winter/Spring 2003 Issue

Feature Story:

Emmanuel's Overnight Success is Rooted in Years of Careful Planning

From the construction of the Student Center to the return of Julie Hall, Emmanuel is making dramatic and rapid advances. But they are merely the visible results of years of deliberate, strategic planning — and of an unwavering dedication to the College's founding mission.

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Emmanuel's Overnight Success is Rooted in Years of Careful Planning

Last summer, a yellow backhoe rolled up next to Marian Hall and began digging. For everyone at Emmanuel, senior faculty and administrators especially, this was a long-awaited sight. The new Student Center, the first ground-up construction project to take place on campus in more than 35 years, was moving off the drawing board and into the earth.

In September, Trustees, government officials, alumni, and other members of the College community gathered for a formal groundbreaking ceremony. For some, this was their first visit to campus in years, and they could see immediately that the Student Center project was just one of several exciting new developments at Emmanuel.

Two things were impossible to miss. The first was the steel frame of a major new building on the back parcel of Emmanuel's campus. This was Merck Research Laboratories — Boston, a result of an innovative and enormously beneficial partnership between Emmanuel and Merck & Co., Inc., a major pharmaceutical research company.

The other unmistakable change on campus was the presence of male undergraduate students. Indeed, the Class of 2006 was already Emmanuel's second coeducational class, and on this Friday afternoon visitors could sense the dynamic pulse among the expanded and diverse student body.

During the groundbreaking ceremony itself, audience members also would learn that Emmanuel had repurchased Julie Hall. In 1974, administrators had deemed it necessary to relinquish the residence hall to Beth Israel Hospital. Now Julie Hall — the College's first residence hall and home to generations of students — was once again part of Emmanuel, completing the Brookline Avenue side of campus.

A closer look reveals that the College's success has been decades in the making. The new Student Center, for example, while highly visible, is simply the latest in a series of improvements that Emmanuel's leadership methodically began putting into place in the mid-1980s.

"Even when — perhaps especially when — trends were working against us, we made decisions that would enable this College to thrive in the long term," recalls Emmanuel President Sister Janet Eisner, SND. "It required patience and taking the long view, but the results are now becoming clear, and they are tremendous."

To be sure, new construction and a growing enrollment are signs that Emmanuel is on the move. But these new realities also testify to the success of the College's approach to planning under the presidency of Sister Janet. That approach is marked by great care, flexibility, innovation, imagination and practicality. It also is firmly rooted in the educational mission of the Sisters of Notre Dame and in their belief that education is the greatest work on earth.

1970s and 1980s: New Challenges, New Opportunities

Despite its focus on facilities in recent years, the College's leadership has adhered to the belief that Emmanuel is more of a community than a place per se, its members connected more by a mission than by mere proximity.

"We have always been much more than our buildings," says Sister Janet. "What makes Emmanuel great, what has always made us great, is our people and the relationships among us."

That perspective became instrumental in the mid-1970s, when the College began to experience declines in traditional enrollment and revenue following transitions to coeducation at many colleges, including Boston College and Holy Cross. By understanding the College's identity primarily in terms of people and a common educational enterprise, administrators and Trustees were free to explore whether some buildings could be either leased or sold in order to continue to support mission-critical programs and student financial aid.

Following an extensive deliberative process, Emmanuel officials identified a key opportunity: the College owned more land than was necessary at that time to carry out its academic educational mission. This enabled Emmanuel, in 1974, to relinquish Julie Hall to Beth Israel and to lease Loretto Hall to Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Ten years later, recognizing the need to renovate the College's science facilities, Emmanuel coordinated a joint venture between Beth Israel and Children's Hospital and provided it a short-term lease of Alumnae Hall. The College used the resulting funds to transform a portion of Marian Hall into a modern science education center.

College Treasurer Sister Anne Mary Donovan, SND notes that the building surge on campus undertaken by the Sisters of Notre Dame following the Second World War gave the College the capital assets it needed to endure. "Without the vision of those Sisters who dared to build those buildings when the student population was great, the College never would have been able to survive those interim years," she says.

These lease agreements never diminished the College's ability to provide its students with an outstanding educational experience. On the contrary, the strategy of converting properties into funds for a period of time — while in most cases retaining full ownership rights of those properties — helped ensure the future of Emmanuel's distinctive values-based liberal arts and sciences offerings.

It is important to recognize, too, that the College did not simply persevere during this time but instead moved forward on a range of important initiatives. By completing the extensive renovation of Marian Hall, and by partnering with IBM to become one of the first campuses in Boston to be fully wired in residence halls and classrooms for interactive technology, Emmanuel demonstrated that it looked confidently to the future.

A strategy for strength in the new century

The momentum at Emmanuel accelerated notably in 1996. In that year Sister Janet led the discussion to initiate the Colleges of the Fenway (COF), an innovative consortium of six neighboring colleges. Since the COF's founding, Emmanuel has offered its students the social and academic benefits of a large university while maintaining the close-knit community of a small private college.

It was also in 1996 that the College developed an Institutional Master Plan. The aim was to identify tangible, achievable ways for Emmanuel to significantly increase its enrollment and thrive in the new century.

To secure a sufficient revenue stream for this growth, the College again looked to its real estate holdings. Extensive study by the architectural firm Goody Clancy confirmed that the College could ground-lease two more parcels of its land without affecting the quality of its academic program, even if full-time enrollment were to increase substantially. The Master Plan subsequently identified this lease-able area as the "endowment campus."

The challenge then became how to derive the most monetary value from that land — and in the process significantly increase Emmanuel's endowment. Together with representatives of Corcoran Jennison, a construction management firm, the College reviewed a number of possible uses for the land, including an office building and a hotel.

It became clear that the land would be most ideal for a research and development facility, given its adjacency to the Longwood Medical Area and close proximity to students at Emmanuel and other outstanding colleges and universities. Coincidentally, Merck & Co., Inc., was looking at that time to build a major new research facility in the heart of Boston.

Following approval of Emmanuel's Master Plan by the city of Boston in 2000, the College entered into a 75-year ground-lease agreement with Merck, enabling the company to begin construction of its new 30,000 square-foot research facility in exchange for a one-time multi-million dollar payment.

The successful conclusion of the Merck lease is attributable in large part to Sister Anne Mary Donovan, who negotiated directly with high-level Merck officials. College Trustee Kathleen Murphy, who was closely involved in the negotiations, says, "Sister Anne was absolutely key. For one thing, she understood what the College needed and what was important in terms of the educational mission. For another, she showed great business skills and instincts. I'm convinced that the deal would not have been as successful without her service and leadership."

The partnership between Merck and Emmanuel promises enormous opportunities for students and faculty in the form of internships, science education initiatives and programmatic collaborations. It also places the College in a position of unprecedented financial strength. According to the accounting firm KPMG, Emmanuel has moved into "a new and different financial league."

First-rate facilities to match superb programs

If the 1996 Master Plan identified a strategy for funding, it also sketched the ways Emmanuel's academic and residence life facilities would evolve in the years ahead. The plan was based on the idea that Emmanuel had an opportunity to grow into its own success — that is, match the quality of its physical resources to the excellence of its existing programs.

One of the Master Plan's guiding principles was that buildings should support and promote each student's intellectual growth as well as the relationships that are at the heart of the community. Sister Janet recalls that the plan aimed to foster connections among students, faculty and administrators while also building the college community. "The first facility we restored was our Chapel, and that made a powerful statement about the importance of our identity as a Catholic College," she says.

With funds raised by the successful Campaign for Emmanuel 2000, the College proceeded to implement a series of substantial improvements to its academic and co-curricular resources. These included the addition of computer classrooms and labs and multimedia classrooms, as well as the renovation of the 250-seat multimedia Janet M. Daley Library Lecture Hall. In addition, Emmanuel's auditorium was renovated; it now serves as one of the neighborhood's most attractive venues for performing arts, lectures, meetings and receptions.

In the area of residence life, the Master Plan called for the College to replace St. Joseph Hall, the largest residence hall, with a slightly smaller suite-style student apartment complex. But this plan soon was outpaced by events, in particular Emmanuel's decision to become a coeducational college. With male students set to arrive in the fall of 2001 and enrollment numbers increasing, the College needed more beds, not fewer. Moreover, Emmanuel's leadership recognized that there was a growing premium on community gathering spaces, as well as a longstanding need for a new gymnasium and modern fitness and recreation facilities.

Adaptability is a hallmark of the Emmanuel planning process, and it proved pivotal to the College's decision to renovate, not raze, St. Joseph Hall and begin plans for the Student Center. "Having the flexibility and courage to alter a plan we had spent so much time creating — that ultimately enabled us to do what was best for the students and future of Emmanuel," says Sister Anne.

Set to open in the fall of 2004, the Center will serve as a central gathering area or "living room" for the entire campus community. Key components will include an atrium, student meeting rooms, a food court, a state-of-the-art training facility for students, and an NCAA regulation-sized gym with bleacher seating for 1,200 — 1,400 fans. Dr. Patricia Rissmeyer, Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students, describes the Center as "a place where students can gather any time of day or night for club meetings, study groups, individual study or just to relax. There will be more dining options, more spaces to simply read for pleasure — more options for students all around."

While the dedication of the Student Center is still a year away, anticipation among students is already building. "An NCAA basketball court, new fitness rooms, a food court — these are things that the students want and need," says Joshua Fanning, President of the Class of 2006. "Not only will it be great for the students enrolled at Emmanuel now, but it will give prospective students more initiative to apply to Emmanuel and become part of our community."

The Student Center is especially likely to improve Emmanuel's continuing efforts to recruit diverse and talented high-school student-athletes. Andrea Basteri, a first-year student and a member of the varsity volleyball team, says, "This new gym can't but have a positive impact on recruitment. Who wouldn't want a brand new Student Center to work out and perfect your skills in?"

It also should be noted that, even with recent gains, Emmanuel still faces a range of needs in the area of physical resources. One longstanding problem has been that of "deferred maintenance," that is, the accumulation of routine repairs that have been left undone for years. More work remains to be done on a the College's behind-the-scenes infrastructure of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC), and many other vital systems.

Why were these repairs delayed for so long?

"Largely because, over the years, whatever cash surpluses the College had were given out in financial aid," explains Sister Anne. "Anytime we've been able to provide students a chance to come here — to a place where we can nurture them and give them the tools they need to grow into their potential — well, that has always taken priority. Because that's our mission."

Indeed, Emmanuel's founding mission has been, and continues to be, at the heart of every major strategic decision at the College. Among Emmanuel's leadership and throughout the community, there is a deep commitment to enhancing the Emmanuel experience — and to transforming the lives of future generations of promising young men and women.

Sister Anne recalls how that commitment guided her in her negotiations with Merck. "At a certain point, Merck offered to buy the property outright, and I told them no, it's not for sale. Now, in the back of my mind, I thought that selling would be a great way to generate money in the short term. But I'm a historian by trade and often view things in broad time context. I want to know that, 75 years from now, this land can come back to us, and that Emmanuel College will retain its place as a Catholic educational presence in the city of Boston."

By Sam O'Neill