Updates Following Board of Trustees Meeting
February 12, 2019
Dear Members of the Trinity College Community,
As you know, it is my practice to write to you after each meeting of the college’s Board of Trustees to share with you information about what was discussed and/or decided. This past weekend’s meeting was a series of thoughtful and important discussions—not resulting in any major votes but rather in moving forward planning on a number of fronts.
A year ago, the board voted to authorize planning for a comprehensive fundraising campaign. At our recent meeting, we spent an entire afternoon discussing strategies for a campaign, considering top priorities—including the very thoughtful report by the faculty Committee on Institutional Advancement. Planning for this campaign is progressing well and enthusiastically under the leadership of trustees and campaign co-chairs Jeffrey E. Kelter ’76, P’18 and Kathryn George Tyree ’86. We will continue to keep you apprised of this work, which is a critical endeavor toward achieving one of the pillars of Summit, our strategic plan: to build on Trinity’s past to ensure a vibrant, sustainable future.
Our work to achieve this goal was at the heart of other serious discussions in the board meeting as well. We devoted considerable time examining plans for addressing the college’s long-standing deferred maintenance and reviewing our finances—both current and projected out over the next five years. The board takes seriously its fiduciary responsibility and its responsibility for stewarding the college’s resources for future generations. In April, the board will vote on the budget for Fiscal Year 2020 and will consider options for tackling deferred maintenance.
Also at the meeting, the trustees came together with faculty, staff, and students to continue critical conversations about shared governance. They did so in a group discussion during the trustees’ Governance Committee meeting, as well as over lunch with a broader group of campus constituent groups. I appreciate the participation of so many members of our community in this work to realize a shared vision—not for divided authority but rather for collective responsibility to move Trinity forward.
We shared much good news with the board, including progress in developing our partnership with Infosys. Consistent with the original agreement we signed with Infosys last fall, Trinity has finalized its first contract with the firm, which focuses on a training program for Infosys employees. The program, Business Analysis for Digital Transformation, begins later this month and is an eight-week pilot developed jointly by a team from Infosys and our campus advisory group that is consulting on this exciting partnership.
In conjunction with that partnership, we are excited that Trinity students now have access to Infosys InStep, the flagship internship program that recently was rated by Vault as the top internship in the world. Trinity joins a group of select colleges and universities around the world whose students may be chosen for this prestigious global internship.
Finally, while this wasn’t on the board agenda, I want to share with all of you our excitement at having launched the Bantam Career Network, an online platform for career advice, networking, opportunities, and more. This is the Bantam Network in action. Since we introduced it to alumni less than two weeks ago, 636 alumni have registered. Parents of current students will be invited to join soon, and then we’ll introduce the platform to students, connecting generations of Bantams to one another.
There’s much more to come on all of these fronts. I look forward to keeping you informed on Trinity’s continuous, bold progress!
Sincerely,
Joanne Berger-Sweeney
President and Trinity College Professor of Neuroscience
