Ever wondered how transformational leadership can steer a university through tumultuous times? Mae and I tackle the contentious financial health issues, the over-reliance on athletic programs, and the potential premature closure of the athletic department. We explore the broader implications of administrative decisions and leadership changes on stakeholders. This is a conversation you won't want to miss if you're intrigued by leadership dynamics within complex educational institutions.
Mae Keller, former Director of Institutional Effectiveness at Concordia University Ann Arbor, joins us to share her incredible journey from healthcare to higher education. Mae offers a behind-the-scenes look at her role during the critical merger between CUAA and its Mequon campus. Gain deep insights into how transparency and humility were key in navigating leadership challenges, especially after a difficult town hall announcement.
In our next segment, we discuss the nuts and bolts of institutional effectiveness and the remarkable growth in healthcare programs at Ann Arbor. Mae walks us through the early years of the merger, revealing both the excitement and hurdles of operational integration. Learn about the significance of institutional research and the importance of widely accessible data. We also examine Ann Arbor's impressive enrollment growth despite the competitive higher education landscape in Michigan, emphasizing the substantial benefits that the merger brought to both campuses.
The final part of our episode delves into the financial intricacies and controversies facing Concordia University Ann Arbor. Whether it's the complex process of exploring autonomy for Ann Arbor or the significant drop in undergraduate enrollment, this episode highlights the urgent need for trust, transparency, and effective management to uphold the mission of Lutheran education. Join us for an eye-opening discussion that uncovers the reality behind sustaining an educational institution through challenging times.
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Visit uniteleadership.org
Ever wondered how transformational leadership can steer a university through tumultuous times? Mae and I tackle the contentious financial health issues, the over-reliance on athletic programs, and the potential premature closure of the athletic department. We explore the broader implications of administrative decisions and leadership changes on stakeholders. This is a conversation you won't want to miss if you're intrigued by leadership dynamics within complex educational institutions.
Mae Keller, former Director of Institutional Effectiveness at Concordia University Ann Arbor, joins us to share her incredible journey from healthcare to higher education. Mae offers a behind-the-scenes look at her role during the critical merger between CUAA and its Mequon campus. Gain deep insights into how transparency and humility were key in navigating leadership challenges, especially after a difficult town hall announcement.
In our next segment, we discuss the nuts and bolts of institutional effectiveness and the remarkable growth in healthcare programs at Ann Arbor. Mae walks us through the early years of the merger, revealing both the excitement and hurdles of operational integration. Learn about the significance of institutional research and the importance of widely accessible data. We also examine Ann Arbor's impressive enrollment growth despite the competitive higher education landscape in Michigan, emphasizing the substantial benefits that the merger brought to both campuses.
The final part of our episode delves into the financial intricacies and controversies facing Concordia University Ann Arbor. Whether it's the complex process of exploring autonomy for Ann Arbor or the significant drop in undergraduate enrollment, this episode highlights the urgent need for trust, transparency, and effective management to uphold the mission of Lutheran education. Join us for an eye-opening discussion that uncovers the reality behind sustaining an educational institution through challenging times.
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Visit uniteleadership.org
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman here. Jack Kalberg has the day off. Today I'm getting the privilege of sitting down with Mae Keller. Let me tell you about Mae Keller. She was the Director of Institutional Effectiveness at Concordia University, ann Arbor, up until the year 2018, you had about a 10-year run in that role, correct May?
Speaker 3:2011, actually to 18.
Speaker 2:2011. Okay, but about seven years there she's been actively involved in trying to with many people, including Michigan District President Dave Davis, kind of save Concordia University Ann Arbor, especially since Dr Ankerberg's announcement town hall in February. That was a very, very difficult town hall. To be sure, she has attended all of the town halls to date. She's also not a member of a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation, which I believe gives her more objectivity in this conversation. She can share a little bit more of her background in corporate America too. Before taking that role, she told me that being with Concordia University Ann Arbor and shout out to Ryan Peterson and others who were there during that time was the greatest work experience of her lifetime after years in secular America. Her job was quality management, performance improvement with a lot of data analysis, and she came out of the healthcare world. She also is familiar with accreditation. She helped build the management system there at Concordia University Ann Arbor, working closely with Dr Ferry during that time, and she's become over time good friends with Tammy Ferry as well.
Speaker 2:And a number of people told me we should chat and I'm excited to do so, but maybe before we get in May. I just want to make this general statement. I've been leading podcasts, conversations, praying for open dialogue, disagreeing agreeably. Let's come together with diverse perspectives and talk. Again, it's been hard and I understand why in this case it's been hard to maybe have a conversation with Dr Ankerberg and there's been a lot of nondisclosure agreements as they've been trying to figure a lot of this thing out Before we get into some of the details.
Speaker 2:Leadership is hard. So for you, dr Ankerberg, for you, dr Hardy, with Concordia University System, now Concordia University, the CUS, I understand the complexity of leading in higher ed this day and age. I also understand the dance that has been taking place. I've been to the last three synodical conventions, the 7-03 committee, trying to figure out how does Concordia University system relate to all of the universities. I recognize it's remarkably complex.
Speaker 2:And one of my favorite leadership kind of axioms today is lead literally means go forth and die. Of axioms today is lead literally means go forth and die. You're at the front lines, go forth and die. So it's easy. It's easy to take shots at anybody who's at a senior leadership, from a senior pastor to a president of a university. And I think a lot of the conversation again is connected to the system and one of my struggles today is I don't believe that there is maximum transparency and this requires maximum humility in the system which is the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and that's what we're praying for right now that things that are said in the dark would be said in the light. And I really believe that May is going to help bring some light to this conversation. So, may, how are you doing? Sister? It's good to be with you, I'm well and you All right? Yeah, so good, so good. It's an honor, so tell about your. I gave a little bit of a summary of your role, but what was your role at CUAA with institutional effectiveness, mae?
Speaker 3:Well, as you said, I got there from a career in healthcare I was originally a clinical psychologist and then wound up in healthcare administration and I had the opportunity to leave where I was working and knew that I wanted to do that and, because of an illness in my family, it was an ideal time for my husband or me not to work full time and I could do that for my husband or me not to work full time and I could do that. And I knew Concordia Ann Arbor from the Boar's Head Festival really fundamentally, and I could tell that I was not their ideal candidate for this job and, at the same time, I had a lot of skills that I think that they really wanted to bring into the institution. And this was just when the merger was starting to ramp up, and so what I thought at that time in my life is well, I'll come here and it's a fair deal. I know what they need to build, even though I haven't done it in higher ed, and I'll stay here a year or two. But it was stay here a year or two, but it was.
Speaker 3:Concordia Ann Arbor is a very, very special place and I stayed there until I really retired in 2018. So institutional research or institutional effectiveness and my main Dr Ferry, by the way, it was Tammy Ferry who was the head of institutional research in Mequon is basically research that tells the institution where it is, how it compares to other institutions, what its trends look like. It can be research to identify program development opportunities, and that was something I was very involved in, as Ann Arbor has really added a lot of healthcare programs. Kurt Gilo was the campus executive during a lot of that time, and so I was involved in doing feasibility studies and writing the first proposal to the state of Michigan for the nursing program and those sorts of things. And to the extent that I can get to transparency, it's really because there is an enormous amount of data in higher education that is publicly available, so it's possible to see not only your own institution but to see it in the context of other institutions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're going to get to that. That's wonderful. So tell about the early years of the merger and any speculation on what went wrong.
Speaker 3:OK, I think the early years of the merger were they were. They were really exhilarating and they were fun. And then there were days when it seemed like nobody knew what they were doing and they were kind of chaotic. There was just a lot of operational knitting together that had to happen. How do you register students? How do you set up courses? Are the courses different here and there? How do you make them cohere? Those kinds of processes across both campuses.
Speaker 3:You know, the real infrastructure of any business, and certainly a business in higher ed was a big focus and there was an enormous amount of collaboration and energy that was brought to this and, for the most part, people in Mequon and Ann Arbor not completely, because Mequon was bigger and even bigger. Bigger then they had counterparts and there was a lot of interaction across both campuses and strategic planning retreats were large we would all. There was a large number of people who would be there, no-transcript running smoothly. Maybe things didn't have to be attended to as intensively and I have to say that there was a tremendous amount of gratitude on the part of Ann Arbor. There was a tremendous amount of work invested in this on the part of people in Mequon and President Ferry really was an inspiring leader through this.
Speaker 3:I can't know what happened, but my speculation goes something like this there was a turnover in administration, and as human beings we are not always as good as we might be at collaborating across a lot of geography or imagining the complexities that are local elsewhere, and so I just think that that probably played a role in it, especially with the turnover in the administration. And President Ankerberg had a lot of people like Al Prochnow and Bill Cario, who had been at Concordia, Wisconsin, for many, many years as part of his team, but they retired not so very long ago also.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's helpful. What would you say? I mean, people may say, wow, mae, you've not been connected since 2018. What kind of gives you the credence? We're six years down the line. A lot has taken place since that time, so what invites you to kind of get re-involved and why should folks listen to your perspective, mae getting?
Speaker 3:re-involved, and why should? Why should folks listen to your perspective, mae? Well, I asked myself that very question, so I think that I was encouraged to do this because I have a set of skills and a knowledge base that isn't necessarily duplicated there and that I can bring that perspective to this discussion and maybe supplement what other people have had to say. The other part of why is it that I should be listened to after 2018 is really that what I did since February is very much what I used to do. When I mentioned that there's a lot of publicly available data in higher education, I basically accessed that and did the same kind of reports that are familiar to me from my years at Ann Arbor.
Speaker 3:No that makes sense.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people have seen the timeline May and you kind of compiled, based on your research, that timeline correct?
Speaker 3:I did not compile the timeline that was a group effort. And I take very little credit for that. What I did do were a number of reports that looked at Ann Arbor's growth, COW's finances, the trends over time, those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Okay, well good, let's get into the growth. Then Tell about Ann Arbor's growth, especially in the context of the higher ed market, for sure.
Speaker 3:So one of the things that's been talked about that shows up in kind of every account of this is that Ann Ebersole record enrollment and the argument that Ankerberg made in February was that that enrollment was not the sort that was going to make the institution financially viable. So I had not looked at the growth, obviously in a number of years. So what I did was to access data from the private nonprofit institutions in Michigan and everyone knows that the last 10 years have been difficult in higher education and there was a kind of subtext in the February town hall that Michigan was not a good place to be in the higher education business. But this is what comes across. In a difficult market not everything goes down to an equal extent everywhere all at once. It's a much more nuanced picture if you look at things on a more individual level and there are often gainers and I don't want to say losers, but institutions that lose ground. So in Michigan in the last 10 years let's start with the public sector, which I also looked at there are 15 institutions in Michigan and 12 of them saw declining enrollment. Only one of them, u of M Ann Arbor, really saw any significant growth In the private nonprofits.
Speaker 3:In Michigan there are 28 institutions. 18 of them declined, some of them as much as 74%, which is crushing. Seven of them held more or less steady and only three of them saw significant growth Concordia, ann Arbor was the second, with 80% growth. Now, a lot of that growth is a really very direct consequence of the merger. There's just no question that that was an enormous benefit to the campus. But that growth had continued and Ann Arbor had developed more health care programs and in fact had two doctorates. Those tend to be the most profitable programs, the graduate programs that were slated to really launch in the fall and one hopes that they still will in physical therapy and occupational therapy. So the bottom line here, just to recap, is CUAA grew in an extremely adverse market in Michigan and was poised for more growth because it wasn't stagnant in terms of the program development. So that was one of the first things that I looked at and it raises the question Can we pause right there?
Speaker 2:This is good. No, no, no, Thank you. We've heard publicly that Dr Ankerberg President Ankerberg said that that growth wasn't healthy. What is your perspective to that growth not being healthy?
Speaker 3:I think that saying that it's not healthy, that one of the themes that recurred in when that point was made, or at least in my understanding of it, is that it was partly dependent on athletic teams to support growth. And there are sort of two angles about this healthy issue. One is that I think that for people who can't imagine that athletic teams could be a good part of the mission fit the ministry of a place like Ann Arbor have never met Lonnie Prees, our athletic director, and his staff, and he would actually be a wonderful person, I think, for you to talk to at some point. Frankly, he just did a terrific job. Terrific job.
Speaker 3:The other part of it is, I think, that saying that really underestimates the possibility of letting programs like the doctorates that I just mentioned and some of the more recently implemented healthcare programs come to some kind of maturity. I just don't think that that was given an adequate chance and in fact in the presentations in February in the town halls, ankerberg frankly acknowledged that there were no projections that were part of the consultant's view of Ann Arbor's finances. No projections when the year that they were talking about had some expenses related to program growth and development. It just seems like a very inopportune time to pull the plug.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what everyone was kind of praying for was, hey, more time, more time for the conversation. We understand this is very complex, but then I mean you fast forward from February to May and now the announcement that the athletic department is closing in 2025 and 26. In 2025 and 26, it's hard, it's hard for me to not come to some negative conclusions regarding motivation, heading into the February town hall and the subsequent town halls, I mean anytime. So I'm going to use I'm in a church ministry, right, and church is maybe more simple, but if I go into a ministry cause we got multi-campuses right I go into one of our campus meetings and like, well, we're going to have to kind of reimagine what it is that we do here and we're just kind of on the edge of keeping this campus open. Just to be quite honest, that campus is very well on the path toward closing and I remember a lot of people getting up and saying, hey, would you send your kids to? Is this going to be around? Is my program going to be around or athletics going to be around, when 70 plus percent of the students are athletic, are in sports? You know, it's like the writing appeared to be on the on the wall. This thing had already moved so far down once those announcements were made.
Speaker 2:And while I'm on this kick, back in February I found it very strange that the leader if you will, one of the main boots in the ground leader, ryan Peterson, he's not speaking. He's not talking. I know Ryan very, very well. Ryan's a very good communicator. I'd love to get Ryan's perspective about some things that could move move forward. But he was, he was moved on from his position. I think he was actually demoted and then he's subsequently taken a position at Concordia, St Paul.
Speaker 2:It just, it, just, it just feels strange. It feels and I'm, I'm like an outsider, Like I'm a bulldog. I'm a I'm like I'm a bulldog, I'm a Concordia steward, I'm a Concordia guy for sure, but like, if this were my institution, you know I'd invest it in I'm thinking of the Meyer family and like millions of dollars being poured into this institution. It just seemed too fast and without all of the appropriate data being at hand. Again let's get into finances. And then President Ankerberg is throwing out $5 million deficit and I think it was even upwards of nine. We're still trying to figure out, kind of what's going on with the finances here. And then it gets disclosed at the May meeting that no, really, the deficit is $2.5 million.
Speaker 2:And in that meeting I listened to that board meeting with 11 brand new board members who had not been trained yet. They're just entering. Talk about a complex situation for a first time board member. You know this is uncomfortable. And then I hear that it's $2.5 million and there's not. This like wow, you hear, you hear President Davis kind of OK, that that's better than we thought, Right. And oh, by the way, we've raised over three point, five million in the district. Can we have a conversation about autonomy and moving toward toward that? And now there's no, there's no grounds for autonomy. So anyway, I'm just given like the layman's outsider perspective, as I look at the timeline and it just, it just feels yucky, I don't know what other word to to say May. So yeah, your perspective there.
Speaker 3:I don't know that.
Speaker 3:I have information in addition to that based on looking at Mequon's financial position, but I don't know that.
Speaker 3:I have a completely different perspective because it felt very much to people like there was not the same sense of stewardship toward Ann Arbor that there was toward Mequon, that it was a new administration, the new board and they maybe wouldn't have done the merger and the and and begrudged it. I mean I that one of the subtexts that got talked about was a sense that Ann Arbor was ungrateful and wanted, you know, wanted ungrateful and wanted to keep doing what it was doing and have Mequon pay the bills. Ann Arbor was in fact never asked to come to the table with any kind of strategizing about financial issues and I can certainly say that Ann Arbor was extremely grateful for the benefits and gifts of the merger. I just don't think there was the same sense of stewardship. What happened in February also was that this was communicated as if it was a financial emergency. I'm not going to say financial exigency, which is a term that has a more kind of formal meaning in higher ed, but that just wasn't borne out when I looked at.
Speaker 2:But that just wasn't borne out when I looked at Mequon's situation compared to other institutions.
Speaker 3:So say more there. Yeah, let's go deeper there. Ok, so, without getting too much into the weeds here, the data that I described is collected through the Department of Education with over 6,000 higher education institutions in the country and it's data that covers students and faculty and money and degrees that are offered, and it's everything. It's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables. It's everything, it's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables, and you can download data sets from this very rich resource, which has the acronym IPEDS Integrated Post-Secondary Educational Statistics the private nonprofit institutions in Wisconsin and Michigan with enrollment less than 10,000 students that at least grant master's degrees and above. And then I also added in the other schools, and then I took out a few institutions as really being very non-comparable. So I wound up with a set of 39 comparison institutions and within that CUW and the data, by the way, are a little bit older because the most recent year available is 21-22. But CUW's financial position, if anything, actually sounds a little better now, from what I've heard, than it was in this data. So they have.
Speaker 3:I think it was the sixth or seventh largest endowment and at that time I think it was 100 and something million, and I looked at three-year averages in order to compute this and bring some stability to the data. Over that three-year period their earnings on the endowment had been 6.6%. Their spending from the endowment had been 2.1%. So they were not even spending. They weren't going into the principal. Ankerberg talked about the importance of not spending from your endowment, like from your savings account. Of course there'd be circumstances when you do go into your savings account, but they weren't doing that. They were not spending into the endowment. They weren't even spending the earnings on the endowment. Their long-term debt is low and in fact he acknowledged that in the town hall.
Speaker 3:I guess I would echo what your previous guest said. Al Prochnow did not build on debt. He was really very, very clear-headed about that. And then the real kicker is when I looked at the change in unrestricted net assets, cwaa these are the combined institutions right was second in the sample of 39. So they had the second highest as a proportion of revenues and returns. So there's no reason to think that there's a financial emergency. It is true that they have had a decline in enrollment, but they look well positioned to deal with that and move forward. So the other question yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so why wouldn't an institution utilize the 4% gap in the endowment earnings which they're entitled to? What? What is the justification? Is it just? Is it just trying to build up revenue, rainy day type, yeah? What's the rationale behind not spending that?
Speaker 3:Well, I obviously can't know that. What was discussed at the town hall was that a lot of those assets were restricted, but actually a very, very high percentage of them I think around 70 plus are unrestricted assets. So I don't I don't really know the rationale. I mean one of one of the things that kind of recurs in the the LCMS space and in fact was something that Ankerberg mentioned during the down hall town down the down hall.
Speaker 3:Yes it was an endowment like Hillsdale's, which I think is just shy of a billion. I think it's like 900 million or something like that, and I guess, if you're, if you've got Hillsdale on your mind, nothing seems like enough money. Um, but I can't speak to, I can't speak to the rationale for not using that. Um, I, I, I can't say what they, I can't say what their motives are. I can only talk about the effects of their actions, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, the endowment at Concordia. I think Pat said something a number of months ago around the other Concordias needing to live off the entirety of their endowment assets just to make a go of it. I think he even talked about my alma mater, concordia, nebraska. And why would this merger? I get it's complex, but why wouldn't they live? It just doesn't. Again, I'm getting at the rationale. Other Concordias have made different decisions around their endowment, isn't that right, mae?
Speaker 3:I don't know what decisions the other Concordias have made around their endowments. I can certainly say that the combined endowment of Mequon and Ann Arbor is by far the largest in the system, by far. And not all of that and my understanding is about 27 million of that is allocated to Ann Arbor, which of course raises the interesting question in the wake of this decision, donors who are part of that. How is that going to be handled?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's very interesting. So let's get into how we got here a little bit more. I mean, I kind of did a quick pass through a number of the points on the timeline.
Speaker 3:What did I miss? What else do you want to highlight, may? Oh, I'm sorry, can I go back one? There's one more thing I was going to say about looking, digging into the data, the financial data. The other thing that I looked at were just trends, to see if the financial data what I've described as comparing Mequon and Ann Arbor to these other institutions. But the other thing I wanted to look at is, if you look at things over time, what comes across and the amount of debt, amount of long-term debt, as a percentage of revenues and returns for Mequon actually is at an almost historic low. It was around 30% in around 2010, and now it's around 18%.
Speaker 3:And I'm not talking about debt you have to pay this year. I'm talking about long-term debt. So again, debt's very low. I also looked at the value of the endowment. The value of the endowment has done nothing but climb during the years of the merger. So this subtext that somehow Ann Arbor had eroded Mequon's financial position. It's true that money was spent on Ann Arbor and that was wonderful, but Mequon was not put in some terribly disadvantageous spot as a result of that. So anyway, onto the timeline and so on.
Speaker 2:So, just to summarize, it doesn't appear as if there was as much of a financial crisis. Now, it's a matter of opinion and the narrative right, but just from an outsider's view, I wish more time had been given before a number of these announcements were made and that the wider church was more engaged in the conversation rather than less. So yeah, let's get into the timeline it's disappointing.
Speaker 3:I would actually argue that it's not a matter of opinion that there was no financial emergency. I mean, I just don't see any data supporting that there was a financial emergency. And especially when Ann Arbor's gap moves from 5 million to 2.5 million. That actually was a moment of hope in all of this, as I'll get to.
Speaker 3:But anyway, so the time, so the timeline, the. What was announced March 1st was that the 24-25 academic year would go on basically as things were Of course not completely, one expects a certain amount of program review and those kinds of things, but basically that it would go forward as it had been, that athletics would be preserved and so on, and that what would be undertaken would be the exploration of a path for autonomy for Ann Arbor. And that of course means finances, accreditation, those sorts of things. And the initial way that this was to be explored was through a number of subcommittees, and the membership of the subcommittees had some members of the board, people from Mequon and usually one very occasionally, I think, more representatives from Ann Arbor.
Speaker 3:What happened pretty quickly is that this became not just a non-transparent process but kind of an opaque process. There were NDAs that were expected non-disclosure agreements for people participating in these. The rationale given was so that the subcommittees at the end could speak with one voice. But of course, when you're doing something as consequential for so many lives as this decision has been, the idea that there isn't going to be more than one voice isn't realistic. One person who refused to sign an NDA was dismissed from his subcommittee. Another person resigned from a subcommittee because the emphasis wasn't so much on exploring a path for autonomy for Ann Arbor as it became clear that there were several scenarios under consideration, which included closing the campus and selling as much of it as could be sold, and to that end, people were pursuing getting valuations of the land or very radical cuts, the kinds of cuts that would not make it the CUAA that people had known. So in the context of this very dispiriting process, john Berg invited Dave Davis to work on a sort of separate plan.
Speaker 2:And I went from doing who's John Berg? Who's John Berg? May, real quick. Who's John Berg?
Speaker 3:Oh, John Berg, I'm sorry, is the president of the Board of Regents? Great.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So this was taken very seriously by the Michigan district and he convened a group to work on this. And, without going into too much detail, that was made very difficult by the fact that, despite this invitation, we couldn't get information shared by Mequon. So our requests for financial information were not responded to and our attempts to collaborate on the accreditation issues were largely futile. There was just almost like a communication blackout between the two campuses. So the district did in the end produce a report, the subcommittees produced their report and during this whole time, back to the timeline, in early May, there was a board meeting that you referenced and that actually, for me personally, was a moment of hope, because I thought that even though during the meeting, hearing that the gap for Ann Arbor had been cut in half, I thought maybe perhaps on reflection people would be willing to rethink the path that they were on. And then the other thing that happened around that time is that we were told that the land valuation was much less than people had hoped. So it seemed that maybe there was a way out of this mess. Basically, to put it in a nutshell, I guess the other thing that I should have said earlier about the shortfall for Ann Arbor financially is that this was based on a financial model that. I know that Dr Ferry addressed this in his podcast. This really just isn't realistic in higher education, but in any case it was less.
Speaker 3:After that, though, and after that sort of flare of hope, it did not seem that anything was going to change, and so when the vote happened in early June, it was a deep, deep disappointment, but it was not a surprise. It just did not seem that there was a willingness to preserve Ann Arbor, and in truth, I had become personally quite pessimistic about this, because unwinding the merger would require considerable goodwill and collaboration over several years. We would have to disentangle the operational infrastructure. Ann Arbor would have to be under an umbrella of accreditation, to seek its own accreditation, and it did not seem to me that things were in such a place with Mequon that that was realistic, and seeking other collaborations had been ruled out early on. Dr Ankerberg did not seem willing to consider doing that.
Speaker 2:I mean that was a fascinating point in the timeline it appears, and I don't know where this information came from, but someone found out that President Matthew Harrison approached Dr Matthew Harrison approached Dr Ankerberg in the hopes that maybe Concordia St Paul could come alongside and partner, and knowing President Friedrich there, I can see how that could be a viable option moving forward. But some of the language I guess I don't want President Ankerberg don't want to look bad, don't want it to work out for Concordia Ann Arbor and Concordia St Paul leaving Concordia University of Wisconsin with a black eye. I guess that sounds nothing but pride. I don't know how else to interpret those words. Yeah, it's just really disheartening. So what was the vote in June? For those who are unaware, what did the board decide in June?
Speaker 3:The board ruled out Ann Arbor seeking autonomy and basically endorsed what are still rather unspecified cuts to programs but are clearly going to be very, very consequential cuts to programs after the next academic year. As you said, athletics goes. I think that there's a general sense that the health care programs would be prioritized. That there's a general sense that the healthcare programs would be prioritized. Of course that may. Of course there may be a lot of athletes in those programs. It's kind of a view. It feels like it's a view after this next academic year that the most profitable programs might be kept.
Speaker 3:But of course this for many of us doesn't take into consideration that the experience of going to college is a more holistic one and the connections among the students and the traditional undergraduates and athletes may be expensive but they form a very foundational part of the experience. So it's very difficult to imagine what that would look like or that that would be. Any kind of happy outcome are still being announced and unpacked and there was a leak yesterday that after the next academic year things as fundamental as business undergraduate degrees and education degrees among the undergraduates, which would of course include the LCMS teacher prep, would be gone. We'll wait and see if that's completely confirmed or not. Wow, but it's very, it's a very painful scenarios. Now I also want to say that in the next year, which is the year that they have said will be substantially the same, there are a number of very, very good people faculty and staff who are committed to making that as good a year for the students as they possibly possibly can and you know, knowing some of them, they will give that their all.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they will. There's awesome, awesome, jesus loving people who have poured their lives into and they're not going to. They're not going to stop until they're made to, until they're made to stop. And it's hard, it's hard for me. It's hard for me to see, especially with athletics being now removed in 25 into 26, how the undergraduate life, campus life, continues there much beyond, much beyond next year.
Speaker 2:They said in the in the May town hall that projections for enrollment in the undergrad program were like 50, some percent or four. I think it was like 46 percent down, which is like duh. I mean, after the, after everything went down, it's like I I don't know that I could send my kids there for a year. And there's also I get it like they're one institution and so they're trying to get hey, we'll get the athletes over to Concordia, wisconsin and all those efforts. There's no nefarious. I mean we want the kids to stay in this entity for sure. And it's just that President Ankerberg used a language about it's hard to differentiate between your two kids, it's hard to break down the data between the two kids. This was some of the conversation at the May meeting and I'm sorry, but if you use that analogy, it's like you're choosing one kid and leaving the other kid to fend for themselves, and not even not even fend for themselves. Fend for themselves would be autonomy.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:You're choosing death for that. Now, is there, like any, any hope Like? Is there any backtracking that could take place Anytime you get to this kind of black and white we've come down this, I really believe there's always hope One. There's always hope in Jesus. Praise be to God. We know who owns us and a cattle on a thousand hills moving forward. But man, what would happen if President Ankerberg and others came into the meeting and just kind of said you know what, based on some of the data, know what, based on some of the data, we're ready to come back to the table to get creative in solving this problem to help the undergrad program continue Again, it just looks like there's going to be no walking that back at this point. It looks like they would love to sell the asset, most of the asset, and help Concordia Wisconsin live off that asset Anything. I think I'm interpreting where we are at this moment correctly. Is that fair from your perspective, mae?
Speaker 3:I think that that number of us have these surges of what I will call relentless hope, but it also feels like we're in a real, a very, very sad and I would say tragic place around this. At this point I don't see any indications of this being walked back and I also don't think that the offer that treating the students like well, it's one university, so come to Mequon there are a lot of problems with that. These are mostly Michigan kids with ties of family, friends, congregations, etc. Everything that people have in life that are more rooted here. There are also tuition grant programs in Michigan that help a number of our students financially that they would lose if they went out of state.
Speaker 3:So this has, by and large, been a very unappealing offer. And the other thing that I would mention is that the requirement the accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, really requires that if you close and discontinue programs and all of those sorts of things that go with radical cuts or closure, you have to offer teach-outs, and teach-outs have to be within a reasonable geographic distance. So it doesn't matter if you say that well, you know we own this institution and they're our students. You really can't require them to move seven hours away. So when and how reasonable teach-outs will be offered remains to be seen.
Speaker 2:I don't know that. I ask questions around the first financial analysis For folks that just want to go back a bit. And this is when they brought in, they kicked out the Cario group, I guess. Right, I know, I don't know. I had a Cario friend back in college but they didn't kick them out, I guess. But they weren't invited to the table and they they didn't receive their financial analysis, their projections into the future, and they went after another group like that, what's behind? What's behind that? Because their analysis was, I think, a little bit more reasonable, charitable, hopeful, honest, to be sure. And then they went after another group, like can you get behind the curtain there a little bit, may? What's going on?
Speaker 3:I I in a lot of ways I can't what the town halls were predicated on. The results of a financial analysis that was conducted by third party consultants over a period of two days. Results and doing something in two days with such a complex organization separating out the data, it makes one concerned. But this was also the analysis which, to my knowledge, was not widely shared by President Ankerberg. Certainly I've never seen it that had the idea that you have these expenses in higher ed and you pay for them out of these revenues, and that was very strictly interpreted and that was the point that he made.
Speaker 3:That first sent me off back into IPEDS data researching this. Because my question was does any school in the COS live this way? Even schools that are doing well in the private nonprofit sector, do they function this way? And the answer is really no. There are often what he was calling operational deficits and that's when you use the endowment or the earnings from the endowment or donors to make up the difference, and when you're in a mode of building programs, of course you might have more of those gaps, those shortfalls. So that analysis, which was relied upon in February and continued to be relied upon in the report that they published in June. Um was, in my opinion and in the opinion of many people, very, very flawed and they had to do a lot of work in, in the, in the um, I don't know, in the path to destruction, I guess I'll say.
Speaker 2:So, again, I'm a layman in this, I've not been in higher ed. But it's kind of like I'm looking at a budget and a certain area, department, campus is underperforming, right, and then I have one of two choices at that point. Right, I'm either okay, we're going to figure it out and we're going to use all of the resources, all of the people, manpower resources, to boost up that department, which I have done numerous times in a church, in a school, a family of ministries. Here we view ourselves together, we collaborate. Or I paint the picture that you're not, you know you're not living up to it. But the complex thing here and I have that choice like we could close things, we could do things, we could paint a narrative that says, hey, this campus underperforming unless we get performance right.
Speaker 2:The hard thing with this is then you get into the data with President Ankerberg and he has a very hard time like differentiating even the data, so like he's painted a narrative, but then you get like behind the narrative and he's talking about well, all of this is really kind of hard to hard to suss out. You can't have it both ways. It's either. It's either you've differentiated it and you've called it what it is and you've moved on a path. Or if it's harder, well, maybe that's because it's more complex and you should have more time to figure this out. Because it's more complex and you should have more time to figure this out, like that's why people are frustrated right now is you've put all of the blame, if you will, on Concordia, ann Arbor, but like it's a shared thing. It's always been a shared thing since the merger took place. So I don't, man, if you could work it back and just let's okay, let's see if they can figure it out, let's see if they can figure it out.
Speaker 2:And I don't, I just don't. I don't get why it appears as if the plan was made long before. I don't know if it was long before, but somewhere when those two financial groups did their analysis, we don't like that analysis. We'd like other analysis. Two days come in here it is. Here's the narrative. We're going to do what we can to reimagine. But man, water under the bridge and it was moving fast and people were swept up into it. Anything more? I'm sorry, I'm just trying to bring it into my world a bit, and it's disheartening. Yeah, I feel like I've said that numerous times, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in everything that you said just now, though, what really comes across is you have to want it.
Speaker 3:You have to want it to work to start to start with, you have to be motivated to figure it out, and I I can't know motivations here.
Speaker 3:I said I can really only see effects, but I I have speculated that one of the motivations is it's there is, there's no money in the world enough if really you want to have a Lutheran Hillsdale, which is one of the concerns that a number of people have.
Speaker 3:That's not any original thought on my part. Part of it is that this wasn't an administration that would have done the merger in the first place, so they wanted to undo the merger and maybe be paid back for it, even though that all occurred on someone else's, on someone else's watch, and I think that there was and I can't know this either, but it feels like there was a fantasy, because this is a fantasy that that this decision could solve the problem of Ann Arbor, that Ann Arbor wouldn't still be there, with all of the students and the families and the alumni and the donors and the buildings that need to be maintained, and all of those entanglements. I mean, I think that you know, here we are, we have this decision, but all of that is still there. I don't think that the Board of Regents really simplified their lives with this decision, but they certainly changed a lot of lives at CUAA, changed a lot of lives, a lot of lives at CUAA, to be sure, and this is a different.
Speaker 2:This is a different story than Concordia, bronxville, like Selma, portland, it's complex, obviously because there was a merger. Like Concordia, ann Arbor likely doesn't exist even today. Another you, another decade plus of ministry, apart from collaboration and trying to figure it out, but what I can see? It wasn't as dire as was painted, so let's close with this. Thank you for your generosity of time. Let's close with this. Thank you for your generosity of time.
Speaker 3:Concordia University system and individual Concordias what can they kind of learn from this, mae? Oh, I don't know. I mean it feels to me that there is a profound divide between people who would like to preserve the, the higher ed institutions, um in the system, and people who would be content to see it shrink and and kind of consolidate the assets from that. And it feels to me like that. That tension swirled all around the situation in Ann Arbor and resulted in, really, if there was any synodical intervention, that that might've been helpful. If there was any synodical intervention, that might have been helpful.
Speaker 3:It certainly isn't anything that I saw. If there was anything from the CUS, it felt like they were bystanders from where. I have been in this and I certainly haven't been in a lot of the conversations within the LCMS, but I've been pretty close to the action. As I understand it, if there are changes in the other boards of regents in the next few years, they're likely to go in the direction that the changes in the board of regents went in Mequon. I believe that that's correct.
Speaker 2:And what was that direction Mae? What was that direction in MEC1?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, this very new board and with arguably much less experience of higher ed than the boards they replaced. So I do not I guess I'll just say this very directly I would be very anxious if I were the administrators or boards of the other institutions. The CUAA is defined as a branch campus of Mequon at this point, but it had a long, long history since the 1960s, as being a part of the system and it, in the end, was really treated, as you know, as as property, as an, as an asset to be done with. Whatever the board of Regents decided, that's how it feels.
Speaker 3:And the students, and the students and their families are paying the price. I mean, every time somebody has to transfer on higher ed, they run the risk of not completing their degree. It costs them more money to lose the time. There are responsibilities for institutions that kind of pull the rug out from under their students like this, and I think that that is a story that is going to continue to unfold.
Speaker 2:Well, this is why there was a lot of conversation around 703 Concordia University system, because there's just not a lot of trust in our system right now and I don't know that there's maximum transparency. I don't know if anything came down from you know the CUS group about this. I don't know how they were engaging with Dr Ankerberg and all I know is we've talked about the prior approval list here and I think that's kind of what you were stating is controlling that prior approval list in terms of who gets on the Board of Regents in these. That's a very, very powerful lever that comes from the president of synod's office and I don't know that we've been engaging all of the brain trust, if you will, within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. I pray there's a lot of folks that probably will listen to this and I'm sure they'll have lots of opinions and that's just fine. We have a lot to learn and humility is the path forward, bringing what is in the dark into the light. I hear non-disclosure agreements, like if I'd have to go down a path with that as a local parish pastor. That would just feel like what are we doing? Conflict is necessary, disagreement is necessary. I get sharpened by people that have a diverse perspective, but it's just we're not managing, right now at least collectively, difficult conversations as well as we could and I pray will into the future within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
Speaker 2:And some people have said, you know, is the mantle of God's grace leaving this? I pray, not I pray conversations like this. I've tried, may, I'm trying to be charitable and kind. Again, leadership is very difficult, dr Ankerberg, praying for you. I'm praying for reconciliation of relationships. It's just been very difficult. And kind of closing comment from you, may, I'm just glad you're, you're involved. Thanks for staying connected. You put a lot of time into that institution. Maybe, oh, this would maybe be a good good closer. That was your experience there at Concordia, Ann Arbor. It was very evident that it was a Lutheran institution. Right, that this was a, this was a. You didn't come from a Lutheran background per se, but your experience of grace and scripture and the love of Christ, christ alone, et cetera. Like I know a lot of leaders that were there. Obviously, pat Ferry, it was still a very Lutheran institution, lutheran experience. Say more, say more there, mae.
Speaker 3:Sushant Lutheran experience. Say more there, mae. I just don't think that there's any question about that or about the depth of the commitment to that. And one of the things that I've wondered about that may or may not be accurate is that it's Concordia, ann Arbor, and so Ann Arbor as a city has this very liberal, secular reputation secular reputation, correct. And so I wonder if people far away from CUAA think that it is nestled in the home of hippies in the hash bash and so it cannot be a Lutheran institution. And I just I don't know how to counter that except to say you have to know these people, you have to be there and and the the commitment to that campus. And I just I think that it's such a tragedy to assume that we know so much about people who are far away and that we we judge and in such uncharitable ways and want to remake everything in our own image. It feels like that's not where that energy should be directed, and especially when there are misunderstandings about that.
Speaker 2:May. You're a delightful follower of Jesus. I've had a good time getting to know you but I'll be honest, I have not had a fun time talking about this. I'd much rather talk about other things. Man, this is so messy, so thanks for engaging the mess. It requires a certain level of courage and just being willing to talk about me, kind of in the court of public opinion. I think you've said if you go to, if people want to follow the Facebook group, what is that group? Right now, I hardly get on Facebook at all.
Speaker 3:The Facebook group is Concordia Matters and the reports that I mentioned, the timeline that you mentioned all of those things are posted there and that. So that's that's a source of information. I mean, it's hard to get, it's hard to get the story out, and I know, I know that this is frustrating to people in Mequon, but the reality is that, as depressing as June 7th was, as much as seemed like well, we lost. So that part of this is over again. There it's. The university is still there, the students are still there, the families are still there, the struggle about what to do in the aftermath of this is all still there. So the engagement continues. I mean, you can't, you can't wish all that out of existence. It's painful and true, and so that's where we'll be. That is where we'll be.
Speaker 2:That is where we'll be. Bring athletics back. Dr Ankerberg, that makes me sad. I'm a former athlete, bulldog athlete Like, yeah, like the closure of that, could we walk that one back? That'd be a good start and then maybe start toward separation over multiple years. It's still choosing the path of humility could still be a viable, viable option. From what I and again, dr Ankerberg and others, you would probably disagree because you have different information. Um, just I'd love to for you to disclose as much as you possibly can, as as things move forward. That is, that is our prayer. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. This is lead time. Sharing is caring, like, subscribe, comment, wherever it is you take in these, these podcasts. We kind of we kind of have a commitment to talk about harder things, and this is, this is one of those examples. So, thank you. May You're a gift to the body of Christ.
Speaker 3:Thank you, tim, my pleasure.
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