Updates from the Board of Trustees Meeting April 2025
May 2, 2025
Dear Members of the Trinity College Community,
I participated last week in my final full Board of Trustees meeting as Trinity’s president. We gathered to reflect and to learn from both the challenges facing higher education today and the remarkable journey we’ve shared over the past 11 years.
As it is always important to make time to celebrate and to share our community pride, we opened with a reception to honor our women’s squash and men’s basketball national championship teams, as well as other student-athletes. Their achievements exemplify one of the many aspects of the College that make it special—scholar-athletes who compete and win at the highest levels while maintaining academic excellence.
During my presidential update, we reflected on our collective accomplishments since 2014. Together, we have transformed Trinity by enhancing student outcomes, enriching student experiences both inside and outside the classroom, upgrading our campus facilities, strengthening financial and environmental sustainability, forging deeper connections with our Hartford neighbors, and cultivating a data-informed culture of continuous improvement.
The meeting included presentations from leadership from our constituencies—Student Government Association President Ava Caudle ’25, Faculty Secretary and Professor of Music Eric Galm, and immediate past president of the Trinity College Alumni Association and Ex Officio Trustee Jorge Rodriguez ’91—who gave informative annual reports. We’ve made significant strides in shared governance and are developing stronger pathways to engage and to connect with our powerful alumni network of more than 30,000 individuals, truly one of Trinity’s greatest assets.
A highlight of our gathering was the lunchtime presentation from Trinity’s senior Davis United World College Scholars. Our remarkable international students shared how they have both benefited from and enriched the Trinity community by providing global perspectives that have transformed our campus culture and the student experience in profound ways.
The afternoon focused on essential College business across various board committees. The trustees proudly granted tenure and promotion to an outstanding cohort of scholars who will guide our academic excellence for decades to come. Congratulations to the newly promoted faculty members: Clark Alejandrino, Catrina Bacote, Arianne Bazilio, Clayton Byers, Belén Fernández Milmanda, Gabriel Hornung, Lina Ma, Juliet Nebolon, Ibrahim Shikaki, and Shunyuan Zhang. We also shared an update on creating a policy regarding student demonstrations and discussed refined enrollment and financial aid strategies.
Our discussions about enhancing alumni engagement and marketing and communications were particularly inspiring. To deepen our engagement with alumni, we are looking at new strategies to create meaningful, lifelong connections. We are also developing the next round of strategies to sharpen our brand messaging, storytelling, and digital reach to engage a wider audience. We also reaffirmed our commitment to fostering the inclusive community we wish to be.
Trinity, like so many colleges and universities, faces financial headwinds. Through careful monitoring of expenses across the College, our FY25 budget is balanced. Nevertheless, smaller enrolled classes, growing costs of financial aid to maintain accessibility, rising costs driven by needed and required maintenance of facilities, a large debt service from the early 2000s coming due, and other economic uncertainties are creating unprecedented budget pressures for future years. Despite careful and extensive expense management, we will have operating budget deficits exceeding $10 million in FY26 unless we take corrective measures. Given these challenges and new ones we might face due to governmental actions, we will defer finalizing our FY26 operating budget until the fall, when we will have more clarity about the incoming Class of 2029 and President-Elect Dan Lugo will have had an opportunity to understand the financial picture in greater detail. The board voted to approve tuition and fee increases for FY26 and a capital budget of $5 million, which will support continued and necessary progress on technology and facility updates. We hope to provide additional clarity on the FY26 budget by mid-June.
Friday evening brought poignant farewells and moments of genuine gratitude to outgoing trustees John Gates, co-chair of the IT/Facilities Committee, and Craig Vought, vice chair, along with acknowledgment of my own departure. Michael Gary, chair of the Evaluation and Success Committee, also will end his trustee service this year, though he was not able to attend the meeting.
On Saturday, we hosted an enlightening plenary session featuring Terry Hartle, senior fellow at the American Council on Education. This gathering, which engaged trustees, faculty, students, and staff in fact-based dialogue and scenario planning, exemplified the thoughtful community discourse that distinguishes the College. Terry affirmed that nationally, Trinity demonstrates very strong student outcomes and an enviable admissions profile. He also provided a sobering yet essential perspective on the shifting landscape for higher education brought on by changes in federal policies. His insights reminded us that higher education faces declining public confidence; the decline is most stark among politically conservative Americans.
We remain in a volatile time, with the full impact on the future of higher education unknown. For example, Hartle explained how changes to endowment tax policy could bring additional uncertainty to our sector. At a moment when college and university communities are facing new threats, particularly to academic freedom, partnering with other institutions is more important than ever. That is why I felt it was important to join with more the 500 (to date) of my fellow presidents as a signatory to the American Association of Colleges and Universities “A Call for Constructive Engagement.”
Despite our current challenges, I continue to be profoundly optimistic about Trinity’s future. The dedication shown throughout this board meeting—from celebrating athletic excellence to awarding tenure to confronting difficult budgetary realities—demonstrates the resilience and vision that have defined our community during my presidency and will carry the College forward under new leadership from President-Elect Lugo.
We ended the weekend with the dedication of the Scully Center, the new wellness and recreation addition to Ferris. We cut the ribbon signifying the official opening, saluting the donors who made the building possible, and raising a glass to all the future Bantams who will benefit from this beautiful space in the heart of our campus.
As I pass the baton, our work continues. Onward indeed—with purpose, passion, and Trinity pride.
Sincerely,
Joanne Berger-Sweeney
President and Trinity College Professor of Neuroscience
