Cross-College Collaboration

Faced with increasingly tight budgets, liberal arts colleges are looking to share resources to reduce costs and expand programs. But when the end goal is collaboration and not a merger, how should administrators decide what services are appropriate to share?

St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges, both liberal arts colleges in Northfield, Minnesota, aren't they right near each other? minnesota is a big state. dl *added town MR have received a grant to increase collaboration  mentioning the dollar amount here and then very quickly repeating it below vis-a-vis the grant seems unnecessarily repetitive. can we just say that they've gotten this grant to expand their existing collaboration, and then talk about where they are/aren't going? dl *changed MR over the next four years, but are drawing the line at sharing career services departments. And it’s hard to imagine the colleges collaborating in areas where they’re competitors, like fund raising or admissions, St. Olaf College President David Anderson said.

But a more advanced library management system for the two libraries,  this is moving right into the academic side ... but this is just having professors from the two institutions co-teach a course that both schools offer, not having one school teach something and have the other NOT? i guess what i'm wondering -- and what i think the story could benefit from -- is a clearer sense of where the lines are drawn on the academic side. do they not plan to do this in a way that one college or the other will give up some things academically? dl *added more detail below and clarified that they haven't decided whether to have colleges drop courses or departments that both have MR shared help-desk services and the possibility of increased cross-registration for students are fair game for collaboration. The colleges have partnered formally and informally in the past (most notably sharing library services) and are planning to widen collaboration in the futur with the help of a $1.4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The four-year project focuses on updating the library management system, sharing library staff and creating a single research portal for students of both colleges.

The grant will also be used to lay the foundation for academic collaboration among faculty members. Smaller grants will be awarded to faculty teams exploring how courses and programs can be made accessible to students at both campuses, discussing curricula and considering how to align course prerequisites in order to facilitate cross-registration or working to collaborate on research seminars or civic engagement projects in the local community. The political science departments have discussed teaching a course at night to draw students from both campuses, Carleton College President Steven Poskanzer said. The colleges may allow education students to take courses necessary for certification at either campus. 

The colleges will also decide whether to share information technology infrastructure, help desk services and even staff. The grant proposal mentions sharing a technology security adviser. Lastly, the colleges will consider pooling together for a two-college health care plan.

Decisions to collaborate are based on two criteria, Anderson said. Would collaborating be efficient and save costs, or would it improve current programs or enable instead of "initiate" *yes MR new offerings?

Within the past year, the foundation awarded $75,000 planning grants to Sweet Briar College to partner with Hollins University (both women’s colleges based in Virginia) and Wofford College to team with Converse College (both based in Spartanburg, S.C.).

Because the three pairs of colleges are geographically close, many have been collaborating informally for years. The partnership between the libraries at St. Olaf and Carleton colleges began in 2003 and Wofford and Converse have offered academic cross-registration for years. But the foundation wants to make collaboration more intentional and purposeful, said Eugene Tobin, program officer for Higher Education and the Liberal Arts Colleges Program at the Mellon Foundation.

Sweet Briar and Hollins are researching meaning they've looked at whether to do it, but not really done it? *updated to reflect that research is ongoing MR the possibility of collaborating international education and study abroad programs, as well as operational functions. The colleges will assess the results of the planning in the new year, Sweet Briar College President Jo Ellen Parker wrote in an email.

Like the two Minnesota colleges, the South Carolina colleges chose libraries as a “common denominator” for formal collaboration, Wofford College Dean David Wood said. The colleges will embark on an 18-month planning period beginning next year. 

“The end result of some of this will be reduced expenditures and better service at lower cost,” he said.

Collaboration between departments and faculty members is the “future for the financial equilibrium of liberal arts,” Tobin said.

It’s a “common sense observation that given the financial pressures, it probably doesn’t make sense for us to have two of everything,” Anderson said. Poskanzer said the cost-saving benefits will come later in the process, as the colleges first focus on building trust and a collaboration culture between the two colleges.