Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • July 27, 2020 • Hartford Business Journal 15 law-school track as possible. But the bigger reason seems to be she was really good at both subjects. Berger-Sweeney's mother always pushed her to attend a women's col- lege in the Northeast, and at age 16, she enrolled at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Berger-Sweeney's mother died of a brain aneurysm about a year later. It was at Wellesley, she says, she became a true believer in the concept of liberal arts education. A psychobiology major, Berger- Sweeney also took courses in phi- losophy and English, learning how to form an argument, and use data to demonstrate a narrative. The skills helped her write better scientific papers, as she moved on to earn a master's degree in environ- mental health science at the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley in 1981, and a Ph.D. in neurotoxicology at Johns Hopkins University in 1989. Journey to corner office Academia first became Berger- Sweeney's profession in 1991, when Wellesley College hired her as an assistant professor. Like many areas touted as progres- sive beacons, racism and implicit bias existed just beneath the surface in Wellesley, Mass., where the college is located, said Jean Fuller-Stanley, the recently-retired associate dean of Wil- liam Paterson University in New Jersey. Fuller-Stanley, who is Black, was a professor of chemistry when she, as a member of the faculty's black task- force — which served as a welcom- ing committee and sounding board for African-American students and faculty — first met Berger-Sweeney. It didn't take long for Fuller-Stanley to see her new colleague was very adept in relationship-building, a skill she believes helped her make the transition from faculty to adminis- tration, and eventually president. That corner-office job came in 2014, when Berger-Sweeney was hired as Trinity College's president, after serving positions at Wellesley, Harvard and Tufts University. The big show There's a joke Berger-Sweeney likes to tell: A pilot and co-pilot on a commercial flight both fall ill and are unable to land the plane. When a frantic flight attendant gets on the intercom to ask if any passenger can land the plane, a woman jumps from her seat and runs to the cockpit. It's a rough landing, but she brings the plane to the tarmac safely, and once she's on the ground, the flight attendant says, "We're so lucky you were here! Where did you learn to fly a plane?" "I didn't," the woman responds. "But they told me I can do anything with my liberal arts degree." But liberal arts colleges do have a serious perception problem in the modern world. Some view them as providing little more than navel-gazey courses on subjects unrelated to any particular profession at a time when higher-education costs continue to soar and specific job skills — particu- larly related to science, technology, en- gineering and math — are in demand, said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW). But the idea that a liberal arts education is less valuable than train- ing in a specific field just isn't true in the long term, Carnevale said. A CEW study of degree-earning power three decades after students gradu- ate ranked Trinity College in the top 100 among U.S. universities. "The evidence is now showing that a liberal arts education has long-term value," Carnevale said. "In any particular field, it's the mix of general and specific education that generates your earnings." However, Berger-Sweeney rec- ognizes people paying tens of thou- sands of dollars per year for a college education are increasingly looking for a quicker return on investment in the form of a decent-paying job after graduation. That was in her mind when she sought a partnership with Indian IT giant Infosys. Berger-Sweeney was one of sev- eral leaders in Hartford's business community who was recruited to promote the city to Infosys CEO Ravi Kumar in 2017, when he was scoping out U.S. locations to establish tech- nology hubs. After that initial meeting, Berger- Sweeney followed up with Infosys, build- ing on what she saw as complimentary visions for the two organizations. Last year Trinity debuted its Trinity-Infosys Applied Learning Initiative partnership, which provides a five-week business analysis training program for liberal arts graduates. More than 150 Infosys employees have trained through this program, which is based in downtown Hartford. Aside from the practicality of setting up a pipeline between the school and a hiring employer, Berger-Sweeney said the program gives Trinity the panache of working with one of the highest- profile companies in the city, while demonstrating the college is serious about its graduates' job prospects. "We have been very strategic with our partnership with Infosys, and it has gotten us into circles that we hadn't imagined before," Berger- Sweeney said. Choppy waters ahead While liberal arts institutions across the country were already struggling financially, even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced cam- pus closures in March, Trinity's not currently in an existential crisis. The school's $596-million endow- ment is enough to ensure it won't become financially insolvent even in a worst-case scenario in which its campus closes for all of the upcoming academic year, Berger-Sweeney said. For now, Trinity College is planning to allow residential students to move onto campus at the end of August. Regardless, the college has already taken a financial hit. In April, Berger-Sweeney said the school was facing a $7-million loss in fiscal 2020, and a potentially worse outcome in fiscal 2021. She said she's been studying the virus closely as she weighs the health implications of opening this fall with the financial necessity for a college to have students — who pay fees for housing, dining and a host of other activities — on campus, she said. "COVID has affected pretty much every one of our revenue streams, whether it's tuition, or our endow- ment," Berger-Sweeney said. While the pandemic has put small liberal arts institutions in a financial bind, Harvard President Lawrence Ba- cow said those schools' survival really depends on their leaders' ability to ac- climate to a rapidly changing situation. "It's no secret that American univer- sities and colleges are the most endur- ing institutions in our nation. … [That's] because they're adaptable," Bacow said. He's confident Trinity is in good hands. When Bacow was president of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., he hired Berger-Sweeney as the school's dean of arts and sciences. "I thought in recruiting Joanne we were recruiting a president in wait- ing," Bacow said. Addressing racial tensions on campus W hen Trinity College's campus does reopen, President Joanne Berg- er-Sweeney anticipates the recent social unrest and racial justice pro- test movement will become part of the discourse among students and faculty. It's a loaded issue, but Berger-Sweeney has recent experi- ence with such controversies. Students last year protested Berger-Sweeney's decision to allow the Churchill Club — a conservative student group that bills itself as "dedi- cated to the preservation, dissemina- tion and extension of the Western moral and philosophical tradition" — to form a chapter on campus. Emotions were high last spring, when the controversy erupted, Berger-Sweeney said. That's why she waited for things to cool down before brokering conversations between student and faculty members on each side of the issue. "I believe that my role is to create that space to let people calm down so that they can hear the arguments that the other side is making," Berg- er-Sweeney said. "Everyone agreed that clubs should be able to form regardless of their political [beliefs]. So when we could just calm down for a little bit … we came together, and wrote a new [club] policy." And like generations of her ances- tors, Berger-Sweeney sees higher education as a pivotal American insti- tution in fostering equality in society. "My underlying belief is that education is the way through this," Berger-Sweeney said. "If we under- stand each other, if we can listen empathetically to each other, … I think that is our way out of it." A shot of Trinity College's Hartford campus. HBJ PHOTO | GREG BORDONARO

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