Hampshire “Seeking Partner”

Colleges and Universities A-Z Hampshire College
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Here’s the latest from Hampshire. Apparently, UMass ‘leaked’ that it is one of the four partners that are in discussion with Hampshire. No surprise there. Looks like the President is doing a little more than learning her Administrative Assistant’s name.

On Sat, Feb 23, 2019 at 9:59 AM President Miriam E. Nelson mnPR@hampshire.edu wrote:

Dear Hampshire Community,

This was a difficult week on campus. Passions are high and nerves are frayed. It’s not surprising that as a community, we don’t all agree on how best to save Hampshire. The Board is in active communication with the academic deans and faculty leadership to resolve differences and reach an understanding about how we can move forward together. We all want to preserve this College and secure its future. The Board has charged me with leading that effort. We have to continue moving forward—in service to our students, employees, alums, the College we all love, and a region that depends on us. We will find a way forward together.

Over the past two weeks the Board and I have met multiple times to discuss options, to review feedback from constituents on and off campus, and to engage students, staff, and faculty. Recently I’ve been meeting regularly with a small ad hoc committee of the Board charged with working on options, and I also convened the campus Options Committee to bring that group of faculty, staff, and students up to speed and engage them in the effort.

We’re exploring a number of options that would allow us to deliver on Hampshire’s mission for the long term. One intention in announcing in January that we would seek a partnership was to identify new potential partnership opportunities—and that has proved fruitful. With the partnership options, we’re focused on finding a partner that aligns best with our intended long-term goals, mission, and reputation. With each option we’re considering such factors as the depth and complexity of the partnership, how much capital we would need to raise, and what is the impact on our College. Some partners may bring substantial value beyond financial support to the table. Our considerations are complex and cut across these dimensions.

We’re also pursuing an approach where Hampshire maintains independence by means of transformative financial support from our community of alums and other long-engaged donors.

I want to be clear that all options involve deep change and significant restructuring. All involve us raising some capital to address deficits in the short term and to invest for the long term. We’ll be reaching out to alums and other friends and donors in the coming weeks to determine the depth of interest in financial support for new models.

We previously hadn’t gone public with names of potential partners for a number of reasons: We’ve had discussions with leaders of a number of colleges and universities and haven’t identified the best options yet, and we’re working to protect the confidentiality of the institutions as required in such sensitive discussions.

With one partner we have gone public. Last month, UMass Amherst disclosed to a radio network that our institutions had preliminary discussions about a potential partnership. Then last week, UMass, as a public institution, received Freedom of Information Act requests from various media outlets, and has now released email communications between leaders of our institutions to those outlets. Yesterday the Gazette and NEPR were the first to publish those emails.

UMass is one of the four institutions that founded Hampshire, we’ve had a strong partnership for a half-century, including a mutual interest in the wellbeing of our community and region. We’re grateful to UMass for their genuine interest in supporting Hampshire through this difficult time, and we very much value the long-term collaboration we’ve had together since Hampshire’s founding.

I’ll continue to keep you informed, and engaged in Hampshire’s progress, as we explore all options around securing Hampshire’s future. Our information and updates site can be found here.

Sincerely,

Miriam Nelson
President

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Tough Commentary in Fortune Magazine, from Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at the Yale School of Management:

http://fortune.com/2019/02/27/hampshire-college-nelson-good-governance/?fbclid=IwAR1LUtvoCB8mGHGAAdsM1QKHLWtowTMggnGCCfMuQYv5e6IvqSDQy0DEDvU

How Hampshire College Hampered Good Governance

  • By Jeffrey Sonnenfeld February 27, 2019

Not all colleges can survive the present shift in U.S. educational markets. Schools are threatened by increasingly discouraging immigration policies. State spending on public universities remains highly uncertain. Even philanthropic foundations have curtailed their traditional support for higher education. The situations, however, vary in each case and many have rebounded from adversity. The jeopardy facing the iconic maverick Hampshire College is not simply a lack of students or lack of finances but it’s also the lack of leadership competence and responsible governance by the board.

Miriam E. Nelson, the new president of Hampshire College, was recently dealt a bad hand, but she, with the board’s support, has just knocked the whole deck of cards off the table in panic.

This month, Nelson bewilderingly announced she was firing Hampshire’s admissions and development staff with no plans for replacement—for a school that is over 90% dependent upon tuition revenue and has a modest endowment. At the same time, the Hampshire Board of Trustees announced to the stunned campus that it was curtailing the matriculation of a new freshman class while Nelson was met with a vote of no confidence from faculty.

The drama opened last May when newly appointed president Nelson learned from outgoing predecessor Jonathan Lash of a matriculation shortfall. This drop in yield followed several years of budget stress but, over the summer, she and the college board’s executive committee framed this management challenge as an existential crisis instead and their actions have since created chaos. And rather than locate better ways to mobilize their own many assets—Hampshire’s distinctive mission, the Five College Consortium community, a strong alumni network, and a largely successful existence as an innovative education model—to a recovery, Hampshire’s leadership appears to have panicked.

Over the course of the fall, Nelson never consulted her five living predecessors, faculty leaders, or other campus constituencies. Nor did she appeal to alumni about her dire assessment of Hampshire’s financial situation, a list which includes Stonyfield Farms chairman Gary Hirshberg, former CEO of Seventh Generation Jeffrey Hollender, renowned documentarian Ken Burns, and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes. Gregory Prince, who was president of Hampshire College 16 years, envisioned tapping such alumni for a recovery plan involving various interconnected institutes. But in the panic, consultation—a cultural necessity in a liberal arts college founded on participation and engagement—simply did not occur and this important resource was overlooked.

As revealed through emails obtained by New England Public Radio, Nelson was quietly negotiating to merge Hampshire with the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) months before there was any announcement of a financial crisis. Further correspondence published by the Daily Hampshire Gazette revealed President Nelson’s zeal to formalize this intended deal with a written letter of understanding—just before shutting down Hampshire’s admissions and development offices, claiming financial duress, and pretending to be conducting an open search for alternative options. Yet faculty, students, staff, alumni, donors, and other stakeholders were kept in the dark while concealed negotiations took place. Following the email revelations—and stung by a vote of no confidence that passed the faculty before it was invalidated for procedural reasons—Nelson backpedaled in a letter to the Hampshire community.

Nelson, however, had further sacrificed her credibility by implying to have the support of partner schools of the Five College Consortium for the merge. In response, Sonya Stephens, president of Mount Holyoke College, and Biddy Martin, president of Amherst College, both separately issued emails to the community countering Nelson’s narrative.

While Nelson isn’t to be blamed for the issues Hampshire accrued before her time, she must be accountable for the quality of her leadership. I do not personally know her, anyone on the board, or anyone on the faculty. I have, however, studied good governance and good leadership for 40 years and neither is evident here. I also created the U.S.’s first school for incumbent CEOs 30 years ago and, for the last four years, have run the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit which draws 75 college presidents and board chairs each year. Therefore, I can confidently say that Hampshire presently offers a poor model of corporate governance in action: inadequate leadership, hasty decision making, and corrosion of credibility.

In 2014, I served on the National Commission on College and University Board Governance established by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Our recommendations addressed setting clear policies that describe the board’s role and responsibilities as fiduciaries of their institutions, focusing on the changing finances of their institutions, delivering access to high quality education at a lower cost, and improving shared governance through attention to the board’s relationships with the university president and faculty. The leadership of Hampshire College must not have gotten copies of our report otherwise the cash-starved school would have solicited the valuable advice of its own community.

Former Hampshire College president Gregory Prince told me in an interview that recapturing the underlying culture of Hampshire of working with the community can save the college: “The partnership principles which define this great school are the exact ones needed now to save it—even if the leadership has forgotten.”

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John Courtmanche, Hampshire’s Media Relations Director, took issue with the Fortune Magazine commentary, writing the following response:

https://www.hampshire.edu/news/2019/02/28/letter-in-response-to-fortune-magazine-commentary?fbclid=IwAR0QNdHvt-TbZVW6Qw3JhH3L-MBzhrR6tRAmRyrwRgqPNoH_Gc_7FfZX4mw

Letter in Response to Fortune Magazine Commentary

The College offers Fortune Magazine interviews with President Nelson and Trustees
Thursday, February 28, 2019

Dear Dean Sonnenfeld,

I’m writing in response to your Fortune commentary yesterday to offer you an interview with Hampshire College President Miriam Nelson and one or more trustees of the College. I was surprised to see that you published an essay about their leadership decisions without attempting even to ask any questions of them to confirm and clarify the realities informing their decisions. I believe if you had taken the time to engage them to discuss and try to understand the College’s challenges and options, that would have helped you avoid some misleading, harmful errors in your essay, such as:

  1. Hampshire did not, as you state, eliminate either its admissions or development offices. Hampshire announced layoffs this month of nine employees including seven from admissions and two employees from its development office. Nearly all of the development office is currently intact and working to support major giving to the College.
  2. In your essay you claim the majority of faculty voted no confidence in Hampshire’s leadership. I hope you can be assured of a direct, accurate source for this statement because the faculty never publicly reported any results of its vote last week before that vote was invalidated on both technical and procedural grounds. This week, Hampshire’s faculty overwhelmingly voted to table a vote of no confidence, on Tuesday, February 26, 2019, and also announced optimism at progress in their discussions with leadership.
  3. You state that President Nelson is “pretending” to be leading an open search for alternative solutions to Hampshire’s challenges. Essentially you’re accusing President Nelson of lying about considering options, without citing any facts or sources. In fact she is actively leading an open search for options for solutions and has had direct contact with dozens of leaders of colleges and universities.
  4. You claim that Hampshire’s financial challenges were simply “budget stress.” Please consider: Hampshire has had declines in enrollment from 1,390 in 2014 to 1,120 this year Hampshire is dependent on tuition for 90% of its revenues Hampshire has a small, highly restricted endowment Hampshire’s operating revenues declined from more than $59million in 2014 to less than $49million in 2019 Hampshire has faced operating deficits the past four years, and has only balanced its budgets thanks to a one-time endowment investment dividend and major rescue gifts from Trustees. These key donors made clear they would no longer be able to cover operating deficits moving forward Annual revenue from tuition, room and board has seen increasing declines: it declined by 2% in 2015, by 7% in 2018, and by 11% in 2019 In this intensely competitive market, Hampshire has had to steeply increase its discount rate, to over 50% the past two years. One result: the percentage of students paying full tuition has dropped from 7% in 2014 to less than 1% this year The Board assessed that Hampshire faced a projected deficit of more than $5 million for next year, and a cumulative deficit of close to $20 million over the subsequent three years if we continued business as usual, raising the risk that the College would not continue to operate—or be able to educate the Fall 2019 class through to graduation.

    Standard Seven of the New England Council of Higher Education’s accreditation standards requires a college or university to demonstrate “through verifiable internal and external evidence, its financial capacity to graduate its entering class.” Our Board did not have confidence that we could continue to operate in four years without a major change to our model, and thus we could not fully meet the NECHE standard. On February 18, NECHE issued a statement praising Hampshire for its proactive steps to secure its finances before admitting a full incoming class.

    The Board of Trustees and President Nelson decided not to admit a full class in the fall and instead announced a search for a partner or for a solution of drastically transforming its business model.

  5. In your essay you state, “Nelson never consulted her five living predecessors, faculty leaders, or other campus constituencies.” In, fact, she met or spoke with the former presidents in 2018 about the College’s financial challenges, and also consulted with presidents of many other colleges and universities. Obviously she was in close contact with her predecessor, President Jonathan Lash, who published an essay about their working relationship.

    Faculty and staff were regularly informed over the past three years of Hampshire’s growing financial challenges. In the fall President Nelson reported financial challenges to campus through three open assemblies with faculty and staff, at faculty meetings, and at weekly meetings with senior leaders and the deans, and numerous other settings. In person and through multiple communications, Nelson briefed the campus on budget and enrollment shortfalls as the senior team prepared to respond to the College’s financial challenges. These messages were tempered so as not to cause excess alarm, but made clear that the College would need to lead major change in order to reverse the trend of annual deficits.

  6. Hampshire practices shared governance like few others colleges and universities. As one key example, the Board, which has fiduciary responsibility for the college, includes as full voting members: a faculty trustee, staff trustee, student trustee, and two alumni trustees, each elected by their constituencies. This breadth of inclusion is very unusual.
  7. You state that, “Nor did [Nelson] appeal to alumni about her dire assessment of Hampshire’s financial situation.” In fact, President Nelson traveled the country in the fall: a third of her work days were spent meeting with groups of alums including numerous prospective major donors in major cities, and tested the feasibility of a major fundraising effort. Most fundraising in higher education does not support operating budgets, and most endowments grow when alums pass away and leave money in their estates. But Hampshire is a young college and over the past few years we have received almost no bequest income, as our oldest alums are still in their mid-sixties. Meantime the percentage of Hampshire alums that have made gifts to Hampshire annually has ranged over the past ten years from 18% to 29% — last year it was 22%. The board and Nelson assessed that a major fundraising campaign would likely not grow the endowment enough to sustain the College for the coming decade or decades.
  8. You state that Nelson backpedaled in her statement of February 23. There is no backpedaling in the statement.

Dean Sonnenfeld, I look forward to hearing if you may be willing to speak with President Nelson and one or more trustees of Hampshire, and to consider a more accurate representation of the College’s governance decisions. Please note the College is publicly posting its relevant communications for reference.

Respectfully,

John Courtmanche, Media Relations Director

Hampshire College
Amherst, Mass.

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I am having difficulty understanding the purpose of Dean Sonnenfeld’s Fortune Magazine article.

I also find it troubling that he would name a handful of prominent alumni as if they could & should rectify the situation.

Probably good for Fortune Magazine’s circulation, and for the Dean’s consulting practice, but not helpful otherwise. Or am I missing something ?

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@Publisher Observing from outside, I think Dean Sonnenfield was simply giving voice to many of the concerns individuals have expressed about how this situation was been handled. For me most troubling are the letters issued by Mount Holyoke and Amherst. However, freezing admissions and telling those newly admitted students that they may not be able to complete their studies at Hampshire (which is what the new ED contracts effectively do) seems to me a recipe for disaster. If I was a student and/or parent, I’d elect to go elsewhere rather than play with my future.

I suspect that the best Hampshire can hope for is to become a division of UMass, the equivalent of the Residential College of the University of Michigan. I hope they succeed.

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Although I too am puzzled by some of the actions that Hampshire has taken recently, the ‘hit piece’ by Fortune does seem unwarranted. In these cases, it is easy to claim to have 20-20 hindsight and state what ‘should’ have happened. It also seems particularly unfair to claim that President Nelson is a liar when she was undergoing negotiations with various partners. These sorts of negotiations, by their nature, must be closely-held and not revealed until an actual agreement is in place.

Unfortunately, Hampshire’s situation is not unique, and many ‘second-tier’ SLACs are encountering similar enrollment and financial difficulties. Hampshire’s curriculum remains rather unique though, and allows student to flourish and succeed when they otherwise might not. I really hope that they can find a way out of their current problems.

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I agree that Hampshire could become UMass’ Residential College, retaining its distinct personality but surviving in a less friendly environment of Great Recession-stung millennials who want less “hippie” and more “preprofessional”. Hampshire has unique offerings that respond to some students’ wishes and it has delivered an excellent education within that framework. I think President Nelson was smart to try and broach such a plan, and if indeed Hampshire becomes UMass’ Residential College current freshmen would be well-served.

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Commentary: How Hampshire College hampered good governance http://fortune.com/2019/02/27/hampshire-college-nelson-good-governance/

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Article in the NYT today
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/us/college-enrollment.html

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^^^

Only a tenured faculty member would make an elitist statement like this.

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Interesting article. Great ending.

@TomSrOfBoston : My response to Professor Eva-Maria Swidler of Goddard College is “welcome to the real world”.

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Yes, the NYT article does a good job of detailing the challenges that ‘alternative’ SLACs such as Hampshire face in today’s higher-ed climate. Made me glum, though.

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https://www.wamc.org/post/miriam-nelson-president-struggling-hampshire-college-resigns

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Hampshire president resigned. Trustee member Kenneth Rosenthal will be president until his term ends 6/30/19. New BOT Chair is Luis Hernandez. Last week, BOT chair Gaye Hill resigned; VChair Kim Saal resigned a few hours ago.

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Good riddance but I will be hard to un-do the damage.

(from article I posted earlier)

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Mim Nelson’s resignation letter:

Dear Hampshire Community,

Soon after becoming president of Hampshire, I said that I wished I had gone here as an undergraduate, because I understood very quickly the extraordinary role Hampshire plays in transforming the lives of our students.

Coming to Hampshire as a student has always been an act of bravery, because assuming responsibility for your education is anything but safe. A college that embodies the motto “to know is not enough” demands a deeper commitment, and offers a bigger challenge, than what is typical at even our most rigorous peers. A half-century’s experience proves that the greater risks involved in being a Hampshire student have always carried with them greater rewards. This truth lies at the heart of our alums’ passionate commitment to the school.

This passion is shared by Hampshire’s faculty and staff. Which is one reason why, for decades, our staff and faculty have sacrificed financially working for an institution perennially strapped for cash. To teach or work here is to show dedication that goes beyond what is expected at other colleges.

Yet “perennially strapped for cash” is not a desirable description, even if accurate. Last May, when I learned from Jonathan Lash that our entering class was again going to be significantly smaller than expected, it was clear this would trigger a chain of negative events threatening our long-term viability. So, in coming to Hampshire, I knew I needed to embrace the challenge of finding a path to the long-term financial stability that has always eluded the College.

As I dug into our fiscal reality, I learned we had stark choices. It was clear to me, and soon after to the Board, that we would need to find a partner that could help us preserve what our community has always valued in Hampshire.

I anticipated that the January 15 announcement that stated we were seeking a strategic partner, and the subsequent decision to admit only a fraction of our fall 2019 class, would create anxiety, sorrow, and anger. That has surely come to pass. For many, this entire situation came as too much of a shock and felt too much like a betrayal. Together with our Board of Trustees, I have had to make a number of very tough decisions without putting them up for a collective debate. To some, this is an inexcusably top-down, un-Hampshire way of doing things.

Yet in Hampshire’s 1970 catalogue, it was clear that decision-making authority would accrue to the College’s president and trustees: “The Hampshire governance arrangements will not be egalitarian; they will be hierarchical. To be involved, informed, and participating will be the responsibility and right of every member of the community; but experience, past performance, and a definition of role will determine the decision-making arrangements.” This language was prescient, since throughout Hampshire’s tenure, leadership has had to make tough and unpopular decisions.

Over the past twelve weeks I have tried to lay it all out there—to share with the community the same data shared with our Board of Trustees about Hampshire’s fragile fiscal position—so that everyone could understand why I so believed in the actions we have taken.
Hampshire’s trustees are remarkable, and I am deeply grateful for their compassion and commitment as we have grappled with the challenges we face. I do not casually use the word “commitment”—for Hampshire’s budget over the past two years has been in balance only because of contributions made by members of our Board, and especially by our former chair, Gaye Hill. Learning last week that Gaye felt she no longer could remain as Board chair was deeply distressing for me.

I have also had the benefit of working with advisory committees comprising students, staff, faculty, alumni, parents, and former trustees who have engaged with us to envision Hampshire’s future. I am grateful for their frank insights, as well as the support and feedback of so many key stakeholders in the Pioneer Valley and across the country.

Since our announcement that we were seeking a strategic partner, I have been gratified by the outpouring of support for Hampshire. Yet even as we made some progress in finding a sustainable and impactful future, the mere fact that we were doing so pulled our community apart.

For this reason, two days ago I notified our Interim Board Chair Luis Hernandez and Vice Chair Kim Saal that I am resigning as president of Hampshire, effective at 4:00 this afternoon.

So long as I were to remain president of Hampshire, the community’s feelings about me would be a distraction from the necessary work. I am confident a new leader will work within a more favorable environment and find the path to daylight that has eluded me.

I also told Luis and Kim that I believed the Board of Trustees now had two paths to choose from: to continue our search for a partner or, given the expressions of passion from many of Hampshire’s alums, go all-in on a fundraising campaign to support an independent model. I also said I hoped they could quickly identify and name an interim president so that at this critical moment there was no gap in leadership. I am very grateful that immediately following my sending this letter, Luis will update the Hampshire community on a number of important matters coming out of today’s Board of Trustees meeting, including an announcement on new leadership.

This is a moment for the Hampshire community to come together, and I trust that you will do so. For to not come together will surely be the demise of this extraordinary institution.

In a short period of time, I have come to love Hampshire, and to deeply admire the students, staff, faculty, alums, and friends whom I have had the great pleasure of getting to know. I am incredibly grateful for the chance to have worked with Gaye Hill and Kim Saal, and for the commitment of the entire Board. I am deeply appreciative of our senior leadership team, who have been working selflessly to preserve what is great about Hampshire for its next fifty years.

I am by nature an optimist, so I am keeping my faith that Hampshire will arrive at the right solution to its challenges. It needs to change, to embrace its core value of experimenting. It will take realism, and I hope that the community will have the fortitude to make tough decisions. Hampshire’s resource of time is far from infinite. I leave knowing that if there is any community that can creatively surmount obstacles, it is Hampshire.

With respect,

Miriam E. Nelson, Ph.D.

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It is going to be tough to recover from the admittance of a very small Fall 2019 class, and the resignations of Hampshire’s President and Board of Trustees Chair. I’m really rooting for Hampshire’s survival, but I think I would find myself reluctant to advise one of my children to apply right now.

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Did Nelson clear out her on campus residence before offer that letter? I assume she’s somewhere unavailable for comment. Like the Amazon?

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So she leaves the school with little to no income from freshmen in the Fall of 2019, and leaves. Wow. As the parent of two disappointed applicants for Fall 2019, I am stunned.

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Hampshire’s Interim President, Kenneth Rosenthal sent the following letter, noting that Hampshire is no longer seeking a strategic partner:

On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 12:46 PM Interim President Kenneth Rosenthal president@hampshire.edu wrote:

Dear Hampshire College Community,

I’ve been a part of Hampshire for five decades. I joined the College before it was built, before The Making of a College was published. I’ve been a Hampshire staff member, faculty member, administrator, parent of an alum, and a trustee from 2008-16.

Hampshire was always intended to be a college that would re-imagine itself. We were founded by our four partner colleges to be a vehicle for change in higher ed. We’ve made a difference in education, and it gives me hope that so many people recognize that and are paying attention now and want to support us.

It’ll take everyone’s cooperation and imagination to re-make Hampshire.

I’ve been busy since Friday. I met with Hampshire’s former presidents; our Off Campus Working Group of alums and parents; and our Re-envisioning Coalition of faculty, staff, students, and alums. I’ve started meeting with all the presidents of the Five Colleges, and will meet with our Cultural Village partners. I met with faculty, staff, and students. And I’ve been fundraising.

On Friday, the Trustees voted to keep Hampshire independent and to fundraise for that purpose. We’re developing a plan for a new model for Hampshire, and it’ll involve a major capital campaign. I think we can do this. We’ll need to raise $15-20 million over the next year, and then, over the next five or six years, perhaps close to $100 million. It’s not unprecedented, and we’ll have to move fast and work hard, but I’m optimistic. Alums, parents, and friends are already making major gifts.

For fundraising, we’ll continue to support our Advancement Office. We’ll also support Admissions. We hope all our students admitted for fall 2019 will enroll and join us, a small class but we welcome every one. We’re exploring a path to admitting new students in spring 2020, and then even more students in fall 2020, the year of our 50th anniversary.

CURRENT STUDENTS
We want our current students to stick with us. Hampshire offers you an unparalleled education. Our program, the way it empowers you, has no match in higher ed. You know it. I’ve seen it as a Hampshire parent.

I hope you’ll continue to work closely with your advisers and deans on a schedule of courses and learning activities that’s right for you. Our program allows students to earn a degree on a flexible schedule, sometimes in three years. That’s an option for some.

We’ll be a smaller college for the next year or two, with around 600 students. We need to operate as a smaller college in the short term. We’re focused on providing you the academic resources and student life services you need next year. We’ve always been a small college within a large consortium, and we are used to having to adapt.

STAFFING FOR 2019-20
While we rebuild, one of the hardest things we have to do is lose wonderful colleagues. This is a financial necessity. Even before I was named president, the College had been exploring how to keep as many staff and faculty as possible. We’ll keep working on ways to keep them here.

But we will have fewer faculty and staff next year. Some faculty and staff will receive word of layoffs at the end of April. We’ll do our best to support and assist affected employees with their transition.

Staff affected by layoffs will receive 60 days notice, so will work into June, and will be eligible to receive severance.

Faculty are not classified the same as staff because faculty have individual contracts. We’ve been discussing how to keep as many faculty members as possible in the Valley or with a foothold to Hampshire, through leaves of absence and visiting positions at partner colleges and other solutions. Faculty will receive updates directly from the Dean of Faculty’s Office.

EMPLOYMENT TRANSITION
Our Human Resources Office is providing resources for employees to transition, through job searches, job placement, career counseling, resume writing, and interviewing. Hampshire will host a Five College Job Fair on Tuesday, May 7, in the Red Barn, staffed by HR reps from Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and UMass Amherst.

I know you must do what’s right for you and your family. HR is posting updated information on its transition webpage, and you can also call, email, or visit the HR office (contact information below).

We don’t have all the answers about what Hampshire will look like next year. There will be some ambiguity. Everyone who is on campus next year can help us rebuild Hampshire. This will be hard work. It already is. But our goal is to be a stronger institution for our 50th anniversary in 2020.

Sincerely,

Ken Rosenthal
Interim President

TRANSITION RESOURCES
HR Transition Webpage
www.hampshire.edu/hr/transition-support

Human Resources Office
Blair Hall 1st floor
413-559-5605
hr@hampshire.edu

Staff Workforce Reduction FAQs
www.hampshire.edu/presidents-office/hampshire-college-staff-workforce-reduction-faq