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Oh.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, February 6th, and I'm Mark Ross, retired managing partner of PWC and president of the City Club Board of directors.

I am pleased to introduce today's forum, which is presented in partnership with RPM and the City Club.

Cyrus Eaton Memorial Forum.

In case you missed the news, Baldwin, Wallace or BW has recently selected Lee Fisher as the university's 10th president.

Lee took the helm in late 2025, the same year the university celebrated its 180th birthday.

His new leadership also comes at a particularly challenging time in higher education, where universities have become subject to intense political scrutiny, difficult fiscal decisions, declining demographic effects and pressures to defend academic freedom.

But those who know Lee Fisher understand he approaches leadership with a steady fierceness, hands on style and strategic approach that will be required at this moment in time.

Tapping into his deep and diverse career spanning the public, private, nonprofit and academic sectors, President Fisher hopes to redefine what's possible and lead the charge toward a bold and sustainable future in higher education at BW.

Before being named president of BW, Fisher served most recently as the dean and Joseph C Hostetler Baker Hostetler Chair in Law at Cleveland State University College of Law, where, amongst other accomplishments, he led efforts that virtually doubled enrollment at the CSU Law School.

Fisher also served 18 years in state elected public office, including as Ohio Attorney General and our Lieutenant Governor.

On a personal note, I have known Lee and his wife, Peggy, since I moved back to Cleveland ten years ago.

Their collective commitment to Northeast Ohio is simply incredible.

I've learned a great deal from both of them, which helped to influence my second act.

Given that they have been demonstrating the ability to continue to be relevant and impactful in one's 60s and beyond.

While I'm not a BW alum, I'm excited to see what Lee's passion does to transform Baldwin Wallace.

And now, with his first 100 days behind him, we will hear directly from President Fisher on the way, including the challenges, opportunities, and strategies ahead for the mission and vision of the University.

Before we begin, a quick reminder for our live stream and radio audience.

If you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you may text it to (330)541-5794 and the City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

Now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming the welcoming to the stage.

The 10th president of Baldwin, Wallace Lee Fisher.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mark.

I have to confess that when I woke up this morning and I saw the weather, I was a bit worried that no one would be here other than Peggy and the people from BW who I paid to be here.

And I will tell you, it does remind me of a story.

I first ran for public office, 46 years ago, and I was running late to a meeting, in my district, which was the eastern suburbs of Cleveland.

It was a typical snowy winter night in Cleveland.

Much worse than this.

I get to the event.

There are, like, lines of chairs.

One man sitting in the third row, fairly elderly, and I'm thinking, oh my God, I missed everybody.

But I figured, okay, you know, I'm nervous.

I haven't given many speeches, so I'm going to get up and give the speech anyway.

So I get up and I give my speech, and at the end of the speech I said, sir, I cannot thank you enough for being here.

I don't know where everybody else was.

Obviously I was late, but it got the nervousness out of my system.

So thank you very much.

And he said to me something that I'll never forget.

He said, son, don't thank me.

I'm the next speaker.

So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here today.

I want to begin by thanking our presenting sponsor, RPM, Frank Sullivan, and my friend Randy MC Sheppard.

Randy is a distinguished BW alum.

He's also a former BW board member.

He's a former BW commencement speaker.

He's a former, Alumni Award winner.

And Randy spoke recently at our retreat of our senior leadership team.

And he remind us, reminded us something called the value of 168.

That's the number of hours in a week.

And it serves as a reminder to all of us that we have to live our life with a sense of urgency, a reminder that we use that limited amount of time that we've got to do things at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reasons.

I also want to thank the City Club and Mark Ross and Dan both for being a beacon not just of civil discourse, but of optimism during troubled times.

And I want to thank all of you for taking the time to be here today.

I also want to acknowledge some students who are here today.

Jaden, who's a freshman sports management major.

Stella, who's a senior psychology major.

Aiden, who's a graduate MBA student.

Dana, a junior arts management and entrepreneurship major.

And Sierra, a senior business administration major.

Would you all stand so we can recognize you?

And to the students of MCC square.

Just so happens we're running an early admissions program.

You are now admitted to Baldwin Wallace officially this moment.

As soon as you apply.

That is.

The fellow 3000 students at BW are the reason that I'm here today.

There's no other place that I would rather be.

And today I want to unveil.

At the risk of sounding a little presumptuous.

What I believe is Cleveland's secret sauce to city success.

Or maybe I should say Northeast Ohio's secret sauce to regional success.

And to do so, I want to share three stories.

These are three stories that led me to where I am today.

And then it fueled the mission with urgency and with innovation and with optimism.

In the midst of what probably would be called higher education, a perfect storm 168 years ago.

Not when I was born, but when Charles Dickens famously opened A Tale of Two Cities with the words it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.

Those words could just as easily been written today.

It identified a paradox that defines moments of great upheaval when fear and possibility coexist, and when our future feels both perilous but also full of promise.

It describes our moment perfectly, especially the moment facing higher education.

Because at the center of that paradox are America's colleges and universities.

And I want to be clear, this is not a moment of temporary turbulence.

The headwinds facing us are the result of a structural shift that's reshaped, reshaping how we teach and how we learn, and actually even how we live.

Institutions long devoted to inquiry and evidence and disciplined argument are regarded by many today as elitist actors, rather than as truth seeking communities.

Because of the steep decline in birth rates after the 2008 2009 recession.

Higher education is literally falling off a demographic cliff.

That means a sharp, continuing decline in the number of traditional college age students who enroll in our colleges and universities.

Many students who are opting for short term credentials, which means that either colleges later or maybe even never.

Rising costs and affordability.

Workforce disruption and technological change and public trust, once assumed, now has to be earned and defended.

I want you to imagine running a business where your best customer segment is forecast to decline for the next 15 years, and nearly every competitor is chasing the same shrinking pool.

I want you to imagine running a business where the customers are not only price sensitive, they're value skeptical, and where you build your entire revenue engine on giving away 55 to 70% or $0.75, I should say, of every dollar of revenue as a price discount, a tuition discount.

And imagine running a business where you cannot demonstrate value quickly.

You have to show it is a long term horizon.

The payoff is real, but it's not always immediate or even evenly distributed across majors and institutions.

Now, all of this would be good reason to be pessimistic, and that would be wrong.

I want to tell you the first of three stories today, because sometimes we need to be reminded.

The worst of times can also be the best of times.

If we choose to see it, I want to share the story of John Baldwin, the founder of Baldwin Wallace University.

He and his wife lived a modest life and longed for the day that they could buy some land and build a home and raise a family.

One day in the early 1800s, they longed and family came across a piece of land in a township in western Cuyahoga County that would later be called the City of Berea, and with their joint savings of get this $2,000, they bought the land just five minutes from the Cleveland Hopkins Airport and one minute from the headquarters of the Cleveland Browns.

I admit, the airport and the Browns weren't in the picture yet.

So John and Mary struggled to make ends meet, and not long after building their home, unfortunately, they became financially destitute.

One evening, as the sun was about to set, John Baldwin stumbled upon an ordinary pile of rocks that most of us would just pass by without even a moment's notice.

But he stopped, and he picked up the rocks, and he stroked the coarse grained rocks and felt something in his hand rub off.

And at that moment it changed his life.

He could see something that other people couldn't at that moment.

He could vision that.

He could grind those stones into something called grindstone.

And years later, John Baldwin became a wealthy man because that grindstone became the basis of buildings all throughout the world in Washington, D.C.

and Canada, and, yes, on the campus of Baldwin Wallace University.

So with the wealth that he earned, he started the Baldwin Institute, one of the first colleges in the nation to admit students without regard to race or gender.

The earliest classes included nearly as many women as men, and students who could not afford an education were offered jobs to help them cover the cost of tuition.

You see, John Washburn Baldwin could see his future in the lives of students who would be educated in the halls of the Baldwin Institute, with the fortune that he earned from the grit of that grindstone.

You might say that Baldwin Wallace was founded on the belief that if you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at, change.

He was founded, and I should say BW was founded on the ability to see a future at a time when it's hard to see any future.

From visiting all of Ohio's prisons, when I served as attorney general to working at the center for Families and Children with Sharon Sobel Jordan, during your texting at the moment, you got to pay attention to me.

Oh, good.

Okay.

Okay okay, okay.

She says she's taking notes.

I don't believe that for a moment.

Okay, okay.

To working with to working with students at Baldwin Wallace.

I've come to believe that the greatest gift you can give anyone, a family of students.

A community where generation is the ability to see their future when the moments are darkest and most uncertain.

And John Baldwin understood that the worst of times, therefore, can also be the best of times, depending on how we choose to see it.

Progress and change rarely announce themselves calmly, they arrive at myths, disruption and debate, and discomfort.

So yes, this may be the worst of times for higher education.

When you look at it from strain and skepticism, but it's also the best of times.

If we have the courage to adapt without surrendering our ideals and to lead with confidence, without fear.

Which leads me to my second story.

While the national rhetoric suggests a country country coming apart at its seams, I would tell you that I believe that every day life tells a different story.

Years ago, I was moderating a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative.

And next to me was a man I had never met.

But he was a large, imposing man, and I'll never forget him.

He was the president of Iceland, the longest serving president of Iceland.

Olafur Grimson.

And the subject of the panel was What's America's biggest problem?

From the perspective of world leaders?

And I'll never forget his answer.

He said, and he pointed his finger all to the Americans in the audience.

He said, the problem with you Americans is you spend too much time waiting for Washington.

He was right.

We spent too much time waiting for Washington for the answers, because beneath the national discord that unfolds before our very eyes on television and social media every day, there's a quieter and a more hopeful story of people who live well beyond the headlines.

That's the generation of students I see every day at Baldwin Wallace.

They're less invested in inherited battles and more concerned with outcome.

What works?

What's fair?

What creates opportunity?

And the real answer is the one that President Grimson was talking about happened when a first generation student discovers her confidence in a research lab, when a conservatory performing arts student collaborates with a health sciences student on a project neither could have ever done alone.

And that brings me to my third and final story.

19 years ago, just a few weeks after I took office as Ohio's lieutenant governor and director of economic development for the state, I got a call from Ginger Graham.

Ginger was the president and CEO of a large pharmaceutical company called Amlin, based in San Diego, and she said, congratulations.

Ohio was one of five states where we're going to locate a plant, a manufacturing plant in central Ohio, and we're going to bring with us a minimum of 500 jobs.

And I got excited and I said, okay, what do you need?

And I was surprised because every other company I had talked to so far said, oh, we want tax credits, we want grants, we want loans that eventually you will forgive.

He didn't say any of that.

But she said, is that can you guarantee me a workforce with skills customized to our short term and our long term needs?

And it took me a back because up to that moment, Ohio's economic development strategy didn't deal with that issue.

So she asked me, in a sense, to collaborate with Ohio's colleges and universities in central and southwest Ohio to build her a talent pipeline.

And that forever changed how I view economic growth and development.

Companies don't locate necessarily where the incentives are the biggest.

They locate where talent is most reliable, and our future prosperity depends less on what we have and more on who we develop.

And that leads me to Cleveland Secret Sauce, which I believe is hidden in plain sight.

The national organization that I ran for six years, CEOs for cities, developed a signature benchmarking framework.

We called it City Vitals, and we said these four letters make up the genetic code of city success.

See stands for connections I stands for innovation, T stands for talent, and Y stands for your distinctiveness.

But we always knew that there was a first among equals.

And that was talent.

Our research at CEOs for cities showed that more than two thirds of a city or region's economic success, as measured by the single most important metric of economic growth.

And what does that average earnings or what might be called per capita income, can be attributed to?

How many people in your city, in your region, or for that matter, your state, have a two year or a four year college degree?

It is that direct.

We called that the talent dividend.

On average, a college graduate earns $1 million more over a lifetime than a high school graduate.

But there's more.

A college degree is really the tide that lifts all boats, because cities with higher levels of education not only have higher incomes, they have faster rates of income growth.

State representative Mike de Villa, who's here today who happens to represent BW, understands that, which is why he has been a bipartisan leader and making sure that the lift that he lifts the boats of Cuyahoga County and northeast Ohio in the state legislature.

And he understands that a worker's education has an effect not just on their own salary, but on the entire community around them.

In a sense, think of this your neighbors education determines your salary.

So the implication for our region is enormous.

So I say, in order to get ready, there are some things that we must do because the same forces that are challenging higher education are actually clarifying its purpose.

We owe our students an obligation to be breathtakingly relevant.

That's why we make three promises to our students that when they graduate, they will be leaders ready, career ready, and future ready.

So let me talk about promise number one.

Our students will be leader ready.

What do I mean by that?

Well, underlying our promise is real research.

Research shows that we get better performance when we are better human beings.

In other words, if you get better at who you are, you get better at what you do.

So it starts with building character, finding your voice, and becoming who you are.

And then leadership starts with the wisdom to get better at who you are.

And a Baldwin Wallace.

That's not a slogan.

It's an operating system.

Our high touch model is based on close range advising, mentoring.

It's the key to our high retention rate of students from year to year.

Just this most recent year, from fall to spring, well over 92%.

We're known for our relationships that our students have with faculties, with faculty and mentors, with staff and the campus community and alumni and with each other a place where they feel they belong.

And our advantage Core curriculum is consists of competency driven courses that strengthen critical analysis, quantitative reasoning, problem solving.

Team Neos thousand and 24 Aligning Opportunities report noted that employers want technical competence, no question.

But you know what they want more.

They want leadership skills, communication and teamwork, ethics and judgment and adaptability.

And that's what we're doing across the curriculum.

Promise number two, that our students will be career ready.

That means we don't just open minds.

It means we open doors to meaningful relationships, internships, co-ops, apprenticeships, all the kinds of ways that people are actually on the ground connected with their community.

We're one of the few colleges in the nation that actually requires that every student graduate with a minimum of 30 hours of experiential learning.

But that's not a requirement in my view.

It's an opportunity.

The Talent Alliance, a collaboration among 14 member organizations like the Greater Cleveland Partnership and Destination Cleveland and Team Neal, recently released the results of a study that shows that for the first time ever, more than half of recent Northeast Ohio graduates chose to remain in the region after they graduated.

And the goal is to get to 55%.

But at some of our institutions, like BW, it's more than 80% staying right here in Northeast Ohio.

Let me give you two examples of what I mean.

You all know that one of the great victories we've had recently is that Sherwin Williams stayed here in Cleveland.

They could have gone anywhere.

And trust me, they were lured just about from everywhere in the country.

Sherwin Williams deserves to be commended because they were unique and intentional with the creation of what's called the first Talent Mega Project when it decided to expand in Cleveland.

And we have been a partnership with them called the Career Accelerator Program, with an investment from Sherwin Williams and Jobs Ohio, and in partnership with Team Neo.

The goal was to prepare our students for Stem careers science, technology, engineering and math and connect them with Sherwin Williams and other area employers.

Over 130 students who participated.

Many employed in Northeast Ohio.

Let me tell you a second story.

Our partnership with Playhouse Square is more than 50 years old, and was strengthened by somebody who actually who's in the audience today, former Playhouse Square CEO Gina Furness.

Thanks to Gina, she invited our BW music, theater and arts management and entrepreneur students to work together with Playhouse Square to produce a show each spring.

And that investment has helped build our internationally known music theater program and prepare arts management and entrepreneurship students to successfully lead in all of Cleveland's area arts organizations, not to mention countless Broadway productions.

You'll find our arts management and entrepreneurship students nearly every department at Playhouse Square and on the staff of the Near West Theater.

Michael.

Of the Rock Hall, Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Playhouse, Great Lakes Theater, Beck Center, the list goes on.

And thanks to the new CEO, Craig Hassall, the 2026 Baldwin Wallace and Playhouse Square partnership will see a world premiere of a new, new musical written by one of our students called Star Machine, April 24th to 26.

Now you can get on to your phone and buy some tickets right now.

Okay, okay.

Promise number three.

Promise number three.

The world is coming at us at lightning speed, and our students have to be ready.

Let me give you an example.

Today, before we go to bed, there will be 25 billion text messages sent around the world.

And if there's nothing else you remember from my talk today, I hope you remember this.

42% of those text messages will have been sent by one person.

Our daughter Jessica.

I'm.

In fact, she just texted Peggy as we speak.

And you know, when our son Peggy's in, our son Jason graduated from college, he said something to us that I never would have thought in a million years to say to my mom and dad.

But what he said, I thought was unique to him.

And now I've learned since it is more unique to his generation and to the students on the campus every day.

Here's what he said.

He said, mom, dad, what I want to do hasn't been invented yet.

And he actually invented his own career.

Like so many BW students are doing today and at colleges and universities all around the country, they are their own employers.

In many cases.

We're educating Jayden and Stella and Aiden and Dana and Cierra for jobs that do not yet exist, using technologies that have not yet been invented to solve problems that none of us in the audience today even know our problems.

Yeah, it's a challenge, but more so it's an opportunity, and it means that we need to make sure that our students, when they graduate, are AI literate, financially literate, and in these days, civic engagement literate as well.

Systems thinking, long a hallmark of our MBA program is now integrated across the undergraduate curriculum and enabling students to synthesize insights across multiple domains and to understand the interconne And that brings me back to what I think is truly the secret sauce of secret success.

And that is all of us.

There are 50 between 40 and 60,000 jobs today in Northeast Ohio that are unfilled each year, many of them in the health care and professional services and manufacturing sectors.

But other sectors as well.

And if every student who graduated from Northeast Ohio's high schools entered the workforce immediately, it would not be enough by a wide margin to fill all of Ohio's Northeast Ohio's unfilled jobs.

And given the population shift in America, we cannot grow our way out of this problem.

And that should alarm all of us.

But there's a secret sauce, and that secret sauce is hidden in plain sight.

And it's Ohio's northeast Ohio's colleges and universities.

And I want to make it clear we do not need job fillers.

We need job keepers.

And we need job creators.

Just getting the job isn't good enough if you don't have the skills to know how to keep it.

And many of those students will actually start businesses as well.

So they need to be job creators.

And that happens when they are ready and career ready and future ready.

And we know the students who intern locally end up working locally.

The correlation is as direct as you possibly can get, but as important as BW is to Northeast Ohio's talent pipeline.

None of us is as strong as all of us.

Each of Northeast Ohio's more than 25 colleges and universities play a vital role in Cleveland's and our region's economic success.

But let me just focus for a moment on Cuyahoga County.

Pricey Cuyahoga Community College, which, by the way, has a full table here today.

So thank you to President Benson.

Tri-C is indispensable for workforce credentials and adult reskilling.

Cleveland State University, where I spent the last nine years as dean of the law school, is indispensable for Urban Opportunity and its outstanding law school.

Case Western Reserve is indispensable for advanced research and innovation.

And Baldwin, Wallace and other small private colleges and universities like John Carroll and Ursuline and the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cleveland.

Instead of music, we're indispensable because we are formation, retention, and completion machines, turning enrollment into graduates, graduates into leaders and leaders into long term regional contributors.

This is not public versus private.

This is not two year versus four year.

It's northeast Ohio against the future.

And the key is whether we build a pipeline that builds that future.

Our region's success will not come from any one of us.

It'll come from acting like a system, a talent ecosystem where public and private, two year and four year research universities and teacher centered colleges all play distinct and essential roles.

It means aligning all of us into the most powerful talent ecosystem in the Midwest.

So I want to close with this note.

VW was founded 180 years ago in a moment of upheaval built on the radical idea that education should be accessible and practical and infused with purpose to prepare people not just for their first job, but for careers, for callings, and for lives of meaning and contribution and adaptability.

And that purpose has not changed, but the context has.

What is changing is how we deliver on that promise.

In a moment when skepticism is high, we are choosing to meet it with urgency and innovation and optimism.

This can be the best of times if we stay breathtakingly relevant to the needs of our students, and also of our community.

And our secret sauce is making sure that the next generation is leader ready, career ready, and future ready.

The story is still ours to write.

Thank you.

All right.

We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

For those those joining our live stream and radio audience, I'm Mark Ross, president of the City Club board of directors.

Today we are hearing from Lee Fisher, the 10th president of Baldwin Wallace University.

He's discussing the way and the work ahead to ensure its students are leader ready, career ready and future ready.

We welcome questions from everyone City Club members, guests, students and those joining via our live stream at City club.org or live radio broadcast at 89.7 KSU Idea Stream Public media.

If you'd like to text a question, please text to 23305415794 and the City Club staff working into the program.

May we have the first question?

Please tell me how international students have enhanced Baldwin Wallace and how Baldwin Wallace has enhanced them.

Thank you, by the way, that comes from somebody who was a friend of mine who actually works for Margaret Wong, great immigration lawyer, and who understands that, that issue better than most.

Our students, when I say they have to be future ready, that means also, they need to understand global engagement and be connected with what's going on around the world.

And there's no better way to do that than to live and work and to be educated with students from around the world, as well.

So every university, every college has a responsibility to two things.

Two things.

One, to try to bring students from around the world to them, but to bring our students to them as well through study abroad programs.

And we do that both ways.

At BW, there are some universities and colleges more dependent on international students than us, for example Case Western.

But all of us should be doing everything we can to make sure that pipeline goes two ways all the time, because global engagement and global awareness in a world that Tom Friedman told us years ago is flat has never been more important.

Good afternoon.

We have a text question, Mr.

Fisher.

What have you learned from both successful and unsuccessful runs for political office, and how has this helped, you, in your current challenges?

Okay.

Thanks for bringing that up.

It was a text question.

Yeah, I know, I know, I'm not blaming you.

I'm not blaming.

I'm.

I'm view.

I'm blaming Sharon Sobel.

Jordan.

Who texted that question?

Yeah.

When Dan, most have said that I've spoken here 14 times.

It actually is true.

But I counted all the debates I lost when I ran for public office that I had at the City Club.

Because that has been many of them.

I've debated many times here at the City Club, and yes, I have won and lost.

My public career spanned, 30 years, but I actually held office on the 18 of those 30 years.

So that tells you that I lost a few hours along the way.

And I will tell you that although I didn't lose intentionally, those losses in many ways were the best things that ever happened to me.

Because if I had not lost, I wouldn't have had a career in the private sector.

I wouldn't have had a career in the nonprofit sector, and I would not have had a career in the academic sector.

And I actually think that every elected public official, whether it's intentionally or unintentionally, should spend a significant part of their lives in a sector other than the public sector, although the public sector is invaluable, and I salute the women and men like Mike who run and hold public office.

But the truth is, having a multi-dimensional perspective is the greatest gift I've ever been given.

And that was because I lost some elections.

Not just because I won some.

so, but what you're describing and what the opportunities here that the challenges that you described are much broader than northeast Ohio.

And do you have any observations or, or, thoughts about what what we do, I think of Wittenberg College, for example, where they're dealing not only with the, the, the different aspects that you talk about, but they're dealing with a community that people around the country believe that Asian immigrants are eating cats and dogs.

Right.

And that's hurt their enrollment.

And, so how how do others around the country face this broader challenge that you described today?

Well, I'll, I would begin by saying that, we need, time and space where truth has room to breathe.

And there are moments sometimes when that's not happening.

And I think it's fair to say that we should be skeptical of institutions, whether they're governmental institutions, whether they're higher education institutions.

That's fine.

But let's also hopefully agree on a set of facts, that converge on truth.

And that's important.

And something else that's important, although it's not directly answers your question, is civil discourse, which is why I'm so proud to be here today, because that's exactly what the City Club stands for.

And I believe that civil discourse is the other secret sauce to America's success besides higher education, to be able to take out the noise, to respect each other's views, regardless of what political ideology we may hold, either now or for the moment, and to recognize that we're all in the same boat in the end.

And so whether it's Wittenberg, whether it's Harvard, or whether it's BW or whether it's Cleveland State, all I can say to is that we need to we will thrive in an atmosphere of tolerance and no hate, free speech, and civil discourse.

And in the long run, that is the best answer.

And the anecdote, not just a Wittenberg success and BW success, but to our nation success.

I'm hoping you can provide some information, some explanation for something that has perplexed me for a long time.

And you touched upon it.

Because if there's a problem, it seems if we knew its root causes and the reasons it exists, we can maybe solve it.

And that is the the change that seems to have occurred in this country, that somehow it's not a good thing to have a higher education, that you're elitist, that you somehow are not good for the country.

If you have a higher education.

So if you can shed some light on how have we gotten there?

Why is this happening?

Well, it's a good question, and I'm sure that part of the reason is that some higher institutions have become elitist or acted elitist, and have acted as if they know all the answers.

And of course, we don't.

And we were premised on the notion that we do not know the answers and that it's a constant search for answers.

And as long as we remember that it's a constant search and we do not have all the answers, and that people with college educations are not better than those without, they may not even be smarter than those without, but they have life skills and adaptability that many do not.

Without a college degree.

But that's only if that's what we're teaching in college.

In other words, it has to go beyond just the verticals of Stem disciplines and conservatory and sports management and life sciences and Stem.

It has to also be those horizontals that cut across everything we educate at every university, small or large public or private, that bring those leadership skills and those character skills to the fore.

If we do that, I think we can restore the trust of America in our institutions of higher education.

If we start acting like we're the smartest people in the room, we deserve the skepticism.

But if we start acting like we don't know all the answers, but we are proud of the fact that we search for them every day.

Yes.

Then we'll earn the trust back.

it's no secret that when you came to BW, they were in a bit of a crisis with, many of the students, including myself, having distrust in, in the institution.

So as coming in as a new president, you had to build the trust, not only with the students who were kept in the dark most of the time, but then also the faculty members who had been under the leadership of President Helmer for ten years.

So how would you.

Well, I know what you did, but how did you build trust with us so that we trusted the way that you were taking us into the future?

Okay.

Cierra.

Okay.

I think Sierra's question is proof that we do not script our students in advance.

Well, first of all, I want to say that I have nothing but great things to say about my predecessor, Bob Helmer, who I've known for many, many years.

Great president, great person, and his continues to be a great contributor to Northeast Ohio.

I want to say that at the outset, and it is true that, yes, we have had, serious financial challenges.

We continue to have financial challenges.

I recently came back from a conference of small colleges and universities, independent colleges.

There were 150 of us in the room.

And the speaker said, raise your hand if you are facing a deficit.

Every single hand 150 went up.

Every single one.

Not a single one did not.

And I think it's fair to say that that's because of the headwinds facing higher education.

But they're facing private small colleges even more so, because, for example, we don't have the advantage of a public subsidy, even though that public subsidy is going down, it's still there for our friends in public education or public institutions.

And there are other reasons as well.

But for me, to earn back the trust, we just put together a strategic plan or I, we call it a transformation action plan at BW.

And we have three North stars.

One is student success, one is financial profitability and sustainability.

And the third is culture, trust and transparency.

Because the business people here in the audience know there's an old adage that culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And so I've been focusing a lot on the culture piece.

It's why I've slept overnight in a dorm, an experience I will never forget.

It's why, at a moment of foolishness, when Susan Van Voris, the dean of our conservatory, is here today and asked me if I would appear and our musical 9 to 5, I said, not a problem.

Little did I know, seven pages of lines.

And but those experiences, have led me to begin to form a connection with our students.

And the last two days, our faculty worked through two days of workshops together, looking at data of student enrollment, labor demand, competitiveness, all the kinds of things that I talked about today.

But we did it together as a team.

And we said, what are the questions we should ask and what are the answers we should have so that our academic portfolio is in fact, leader ready, career ready and future ready.

We did that together as a team in a spirit of togetherness and shared governance with shared information and also, as I reminded them, share with you responsibility as well.

So the answer is that there is no easy answer.

Cierra but I think that, we obviously have to reduce that deficit and that comes through cost cutting assumption revenue generation.

But it also comes from a culture of trust and transparency.

Ohio State is a is a pretty well oiled machine in terms of, you know, siphoning off graduates from from other parts of the state who may want to stay in Columbus.

Is there anything we can learn from from the way they retain graduates, or is there is their model sort of unique because of their position in the state?

Well, it's a great question.

Well, first, let me say to you that when I was at see us for cities, we did research and it was, the name of the research was The Young and the restless, and it talked about, where do, young women and men between the ages of 18 and 35 end up living?

And here's what was the conclusion.

Was that many students, after they graduate college want to explore the world.

And so even if they love their hometown, they leave their hometown for a while.

They either go to Chicago or to New York or to Boston or to another country.

But at age 35, they anchor.

And so wherever they live, when they are 35, that's where they stay the rest of their life.

So for those of you who have sons or daughters or grandchildren who you're upset that left after they graduated from college and you're wondering whether they ever come back.

Let's say they are 34 years old.

You have 12 months.

You have 12 months to get them back.

But here's the good news.

There's something in the air and there's something in the water.

In Cleveland, it's called the boomerang effect.

It's amazing how many young men and women boomerang back to Cleveland, back to northeast Ohio.

Now, yes, we're proud of the fact that most of our graduates actually stay here from the very beginning, and we work on that every day.

But the reason we stay in touch with them and our alumni network that's run by Tony Peebles is that we stay in touch with them because we want them to boomerang back.

And if not for them, running back, of course, to be successful, but the most way they can be successful is the boomerang back to our hometown, to our hometown region.

And so we stay in touch.

And I think the best way to compete with Ohio State is number one, stay breathtakingly relevant.

Number two, stay breathtakingly connected to the local community, because those local internships that we have, that's what's going to be the stickiness that keeps them in this region.

More than anything else we can do.

As important as everything we do in the classroom, what we do outside the classroom is equally important, and it's that connection that occurs during the college experience that will connect them here.

And third, of course, is making sure that we have a quality of life both on our college campuses and in our communities that keeps them there, because in the end, your generation, I believe, is focused more than anything else on quality of life, the balance in your life that allows you to do all the things that are important.

I graduated on years ago from a center for Creative Leadership, leadership program, and they gave us a pin that had four dots on it, and they represented the four corners of your life, career, community, faith and family.

That's the balance that we need to try to achieve on our campuses and try to achieve in our students lives.

And in the students who, when they have a choice between coming back here or not, they say, oh, I want to come back home, Northeast Ohio and Boomerang, because that's where we have balance.

in 2023 there was supposed to be a master plan released.

So selfishly, I want to know, where do you see the campus footprint growing over the next 5 or 10 years?

Great question.

I think it's fair to say when you look when we look at the campus footprint, it's got to be aligned with our academic portfolio.

In other words, we need to make sure that our academic portfolio and the spaces are aligned because our campus too big.

Is it too small?

Is it in the right places?

And I think it's fair to say that most campuses today around the world are looking at their space.

We might call it optimization and saying, do we need every building?

And if we do, or we're using those buildings right, should we convert it into a place maybe that we can rent out to the community as a benefit to the community, but also brings in revenue?

So I don't really call it growing.

I call it optimization.

Thinking more smartly about our footprint, keeping it beautiful and intimate as it is with those grindstone buildings.

A place where people feel like they can be BW the best of both worlds, not too far away from home and not too close to home.

When you're on our campus, if you live in Cleveland, you think you're 10,000 miles away, but you can be downtown in 12 minutes.

That's what I mean by BW the best of both worlds.

So I want to make it clear that when we're looking at our campus footprint, we don't begin with the notion that we should grow.

We begin with the notion that we should fit with our mission and our plan, and make sure that those fit and that determines whether we grow, whether we shrink, or whether we reorient.

Hello.

My name is Debbie Schoonover.

I am the interim director of career services at Wallace, and I'm not here because he pay me today.

I'm here on my own dime so I can say anything I want.

I, I'm hoping that you will consider this message today as a call to arms to the people in this room.

You all have something to give.

And we've heard this expressed that, we want people to stay in Northeast Ohio.

We want these kids to have opportunities.

We want them to have internships and opportunities to connect with the community.

Every single person in this room can do one of those things.

So I'm going to stand in the back before when when Lee is finished.

And I'm hoping if you just have a business card you'll throw at me, I'll give you a call.

I can connect you with a student, even if it's a 20 minute call to say, tell me about yourself.

Why do you do?

What was your career tract?

What can I do to connect you to somebody in the city?

Sorry to take your time, Lee.

Oh, it wasn't taking my time.

That's great.

I swear, I did not ask Debbie to say that, but I am glad that she did.

Debbie, by the way, is the former executive director of leadership.

Cleveland.

So we attract talented BW, and Lacey Kogelnik is our vice president for career readiness.

So Lacey and Debbie and a number of hours work on this issue every single day.

So thank you for that.

Appreciate it.

By the way, before I forget, before the last question, I do want to acknowledge three people in the room.

I want to acknowledge my brother in law, former Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone, who's here today.

I want to acknowledge my brother in law, lawyer extraordinaire Steve Miller, who's here today.

And I want to acknowledge my best friend, my presidential partner, and the person who many believe should be the president of BW Peggy Zone Fisher.

Thank you.

You mentioned revenue generation.

I just wondered what BW is doing, creatively to generate revenue.

And then also just in general, what you think colleges and universities should be considering when thinking about how to generate revenue?

One of the things that you learn when you, run for public office, we hold public office that you should answer the question, but not necessarily immediately.

So I want to acknowledge one of the person in the room before I answer your question.

Because I keep seeing people and I think, oh, I should mention them.

I just saw Robin Smyers.

And, Robin is special to BW because both her parents, Dolly and Steve, mentor, who are legends, of course, in Cleveland, are graduates of BW and met at BW, and so, if you have any need for further proof why BW is a special place, think of Stephen Dolly, mentor.

Okay, now answer your question.

Not sure what it was, but I'm going to do my best.

Okay?

Okay.

Revenue generation.

Thank you, thank you.

Okay.

You can't cut your way through prosperity, but you also have to focus on that.

But in the end, revenue is the key.

And at the risk of oversimplifying it, there are three buckets that we look at.

Number one is enrollment, which is the most important one because most of every college and university is revenue comes from that one bucket of enrollment.

So it means that you have to stay relevant.

You have to be aggressive in reaching out, personalizing your approach to students so that they don't feel like a number.

Because these days, students have so many, many choices, particularly because of the tuition discounts that I call the tuition arms race that every college university is engaging in.

That means that whatever you see, the sticker price is that's not the sticker price, is it?

Something called that tuition revenue.

That's after the discount.

And because so many students are getting scholarships, it's so many institutions.

Just the scholarship alone isn't going to do it.

It means you have to personalize.

You need to know their name.

When I call it minutes student, I have their personal statement in front of me.

Not just their name.

I read that personal statement.

So does our admission staff.

Those are our faculty.

So our alumni, we talk about who they are, we answer their questions.

And so enrollment is number one.

Number two is fundraising.

Many of you know that we have an interim VP of philanthropy who is well known in Cleveland, Melanie Shaqiri, who's here today, and.

Melanie and her team, a number of whom are here today as well, who will also be soliciting each of you as you leave.

They have taken fundraising and advancement to a whole nother level, but it's basically the same approach as we do with enrollment.

It's personalization.

It's knowing the person's name, knowing who they are, knowing more about them.

And the third is what's called alternative revenue generation.

And that is identify new revenue streams, for example, making sure that our campus is open and running 12 months out of the year, 24 over seven to the extent possible, so that we are producing revenue streams that are aligned with our mission, but also bringing in new revenue beyond enrollment and fundraising.

That, in a nutshell, is our plan.

Thank you, president Lee Fisher, for joining us at the City Club forums like this, or made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you, you can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City club.org.

I'm Mark Ross.

This forum is now adjourned.

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