The school’s president has made the university a major player in higher education, gaining supporters — and detractors — in the process.
The vision. It’s what people always mention when describing Paul Trible.
In the 10 years that he has led Christopher Newport University as president, Trible’s vision has taken a modest college that served mostly local, older commuter students to a selective university populated by many students just out of high school, the bulk of whom live on campus and come from homes in Northern Virginia.
Academic standards at the school have soared — incoming freshmen now boast an average SAT score of 1165, more than 200 points higher than 10 years ago.
More students from throughout the state and beyond are attracted to a campus that continues to expand, sporting some of the newest dorms of any publicly financed university, along with modern athletic facilities, a new student center and an internationally recognized arts site.
People inside and outside the university are amazed at the speed at which CNU has been transformed. But Trible’s strong leadership — while praised by many — has generated casualties in the form of eliminated departments, laid-off faculty and staff, a drastic reduction in nontraditional and part-time students and a noticeable decline in minority student enrollment, especially among black students.
University officials said academic and employee reductions were needed to address a loss in state money in 2002 and to sharpen CNU’s liberal arts focus. The university appears to have rebounded financially, but the nursing and sports therapy departments will not return, Trible said.
“The nontraditional, part-time students voted with their feet and determined that there were better choices for them than CNU,” he said.
MINORITY ENROLLMENT
Trible has attributed the decline in minority student enrollment to tougher admission requirements but noted that school officials were committed to attracting a variety of students. For the past three years, the university has operated a college preparatory program in area high schools for first-generation college students.
Black student enrollment at the university 10 years ago was 17 percent. Today, it’s 7 percent.
Thaddeus Holloman, senior vice president at Old Point National Bank and a member of CNU’s Board of Visitors, said several factors might have contributed to the decline — and that one of them was money.
“We are a new school,” Holloman said. “We don’t have any endowment. We can’t offer the talented kids the financial packages other colleges can offer.”
The problem isn’t unique to CNU, Holloman said.
“If you look at minority enrollment across Virginia, all the schools are doing abyssmally,” with the exception of the historically black colleges and universities, Old Dominion University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Holloman said black student enrollment at most of the colleges and universities hovered between 5 percent and 10 percent.
He said the decline in CNU’s black enrollment had stopped and that in recent years, the numbers had inched up. The university has created a task force to boost minority enrollment and is working with Hampton Roads’ public high schools to help prepare students for college, in hopes of adding more local students to CNU.
Fewer Asian students also attend the school, but the proportion of Hispanic and American Indian students on campus has increased slightly, by one percentage point.
Some wonder whether Trible’s plans for making CNU one of the nation’s top liberal arts universities is in the best interests of students.
“I don’t know if his feet are on the ground, in terms of looking at the future of these kids, rather than the prestige of the college itself,” said Ellen Rhodes, a parent of three children, two of whom are senior business majors at CNU. Her other son is a university alumnus. She said the school’s primary mission should be helping students get jobs, and she’s not sure earning a liberal arts degree does that. “There are enough liberal arts colleges.”
Newport News Mayor Joe S. Frank said the university had no obligation to give local students preference in admissions. The city benefits from the purchasing power and community service of current students and employees, regardless of where they come from.
“Universities ought to attract people based on qualifications,” Frank said. “Some (residents) from Newport News will go there because that’s what they choose and they can get in and they’re qualified.”
‘TOOK A LEAP OF FAITH’
For his part, Trible is more than confident about the path that CNU has taken. During an interview this month, he rattled off a list of statistical highlights from the past 10 years: increasing numbers of students living on campus — 58 percent this school year; a jump in average SAT scores among freshmen from 960 to 1165; a freshman class that has more than doubled, to 1,174 students; and higher retention and graduation rates.
“Ten years ago, CNU essentially had open admissions,” Trible said. Today, “we’re among the most selective schools, and we will continue to get more selective.”
When he became president, Trible said, “Enrollment had been in a free fall for over a decade.” The Board of Visitors directed him to quickly improve the situation.
“The Board of Visitors took a leap of faith,” he said. “I was embraced by the faculty and students, and we set out to build a great university.”
Provost Richard Summerville, who oversaw academics when Trible became president, said CNU had experienced about five years of steady enrollment declines. He said he didn’t recall there being a sense of desperation or panic about the situation. But because fewer students were enrolled on campus, the college received less state money, which meant that some positions were cut and managers worked a lot more hours, said Summerville, who will retire in June after 27 years at the university.
In 1996, CNU’s enrollment stood at 4,565. This past fall, 4,793 students took classes at the university.
With Trible’s arrival on campus came a positive energy and the hope that things would improve, Summerville said. People trusted him because he showed resolve and results.
“I don’t think there was a soul on this campus who imagined the fix would be the one Paul Trible brought about,” Summerville said.
PROGRAM LOSSES, GAINS
The fix started with reorganizing programs, such as those in the arts and sciences, then grew into an administrative recommendation to disband graduate programs in environmental science and applied physics/ computer science. Faculty and students fought the move, and the programs remained.
In 2000, Trible suggested that the nursing and social work departments be discontinued. Social work survived, but in 2002, the CNU Board of Visitors voted to end nursing, the education department and the recreation, sport and wellness management department. The decision caused a major upheaval on campus as faculty were let go and many students either transferred to other schools or changed their majors.
After requests from the Newport News school district to continue supplying teachers to city schools, CNU partnered with the district in 2004 to establish a five-year master of arts in teaching program that allows students to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
In May 2005, Trible noted, 53 students completed the master’s program, and almost 40 took teaching jobs in Newport News. Eleven were hired in Hampton, York County, Isle of Wight County and Chesapeake, and 65 more are scheduled to graduate from the program in May.
In the past decade, the university has also started academic programs in chemistry and communications. A new Institute for Science Education, scheduled to open in January, will train local elementary teachers in improving science instruction.
As the Peninsula sees an ever-growing demand for nurses and physical therapists, some local residents and CNU employees still wonder why the university opted to get rid of departments that effectively served the community.
“I don’t like that they dropped education and nursing back when I was a sophomore,” said Charlie Rhodes, a CNU senior and the son of Ellen Rhodes. Yet, mother and son think that the school offers a quality education. And despite her skepticism of the value of a liberal arts education, Ellen Rhodes said her two older sons landed good jobs through university contacts.
Summerville maintains that the decision to end departments was led by faculty and done in the best interests of the university. Other current and former faculty say professors were overruled by a powerful administration — led by Trible — that wanted the departments gone and continues to direct academic affairs.
Math department chairman and professor Brian Bradie and Faculty Senate President and associate English professor Tracey Schwarze disagree, saying that professors at CNU have full control over the content and direction of academic programs. A faculty team spent two years revising the core curriculum for students’ first two years of college. The curriculum was put into place this past fall.
“The curriculum is faculty-driven,” Bradie said. “The administration does have faith in the faculty that we’re going to put together a strong curriculum and maintain a strong curriculum.”
Bob Cummings, a former recreation, sport and wellness management professor, said he’s still upset that he lost his job in October 2002, months after giving the university a $100,000 donation. But he gives Trible credit for being very smart and extremely good at raising money for CNU.
“I have a great deal of respect for Trible,” Cummings said. “He’s wonderful one-on-one with people, and people love him, and I can understand why. He has charisma.”
WELL-CONNECTED
Trible has used his political experience as a former congressman and U.S. senator, extensive connections and engaging personality to bring millions of public and private dollars to CNU. The amount of private money flowing into the university has grown from about $650,000 in 1996 to $9 million today. It’s also made possible the construction of nine buildings on campus over the past six years: three residence halls, two apartment complexes (one that sits above retail shops), an exercise/convocation center, an athletic stadium, the Ferguson Center for the Arts and a new student union, which opened in September.
The university building spree is far from over. Trible wants to add a building a year over the next decade, which would improve classrooms and office space. The spiffy new campus digs are one reason that freshmen applications to CNU have increased more than 500 percent since 1996. And the students being admitted are showing an academic prowess not seen before, thanks to higher admissions standards and aggressive recruiting efforts.
CNU sophomore Patrick McBride, who lives on campus, said the school’s increasingly residential nature contributed to a close-knit, positive environment where students didn’t have to go far to be involved in campus activities.
“Everything you need in college is right there,” he said. “I hardly ever leave campus because everything is right there.”
NEIGHBORS AFFECTED
More students on campus caused problems for David Williams and his wife, Judy. The couple, who lived on Cale Circle, two blocks southwest of CNU, watched their neighborhood change from family housing to growing rental units filled with college students. The students who lived nearby didn’t seem to care much for property upkeep and filled the area with noise from football games, concerts and home parties.
“You could hear them in our neighborhood,” Williams said. “One night, I saw a car pulling some kids on skateboards down the street.”
In June 2005, the Williamses decided that they’d had enough and moved to Smithfield.
Other families and businesses didn’t want to move but did once expansion efforts led a university foundation to purchase more land for new buildings, especially along the busy campus frontage on Warwick Boulevard. It’s now dominated by the Freeman Center and the CNU Village, a combination of apartments and retail space.
Encouraging upperclassmen and requiring freshmen and sophomores to live on campus has caused a housing shortage at CNU the past two years. The university’s average room and board expenses — $7,500 a year in 2005 — are some of the highest in Virginia for a public university. But many students don’t seem to mind, mainly because the housing accommodations are so modern, said McBride and former Student Government President and senior Mehreen Farooq.
Trible regularly makes time to listen to student concerns, knows many students on a first-name basis and maintains an open-door policy.
Farooq said she came to CNU because Trible told her to send an application for the university’s President’s Leadership Program directly to him after she missed the deadline. She got into the program.
“Every time I met him, he remembered me and he remembered my parents,” Farooq said. “I really felt like my president was accessible.”
At a state of the university address this fall, Trible joked with students in response to a question from one about tuition rising to pay for new buildings.
He said the construction of academic buildings wouldn’t affect tuition and that state and private money would pick up most costs, including that for a planned science complex.
He then began cultivating the next generation of CNU donors.
“We can put your name on that building,” he said, “for a substantial contribution.”
Daily Press researcher Tracy Sorensen and staff writers Lisa Finneran and Catherine Grimes contributed to this article. *
During Trible’s tenure
Some of the changes that have taken place at Christopher Newport University in the 10 years that Paul Trible has been its president:
Paul Trible’s salary
1996: $150,000
2006: $321,631
Total enrollment (fall head count)
1996: 4,565
2006: 4,793
Freshman enrollment
1996: 543
2006: 1,174
Graduation rate (Starting with the freshman class over a six-year period)
1996: 35%
2006: 51%
Average SAT score
1996: 960
2006: 1165
Average student age
1996: 26
2006: 21
Amount of private fundraising dollars generated
1996: $656,120
2006: $9,767,974
Percentage of white and black students as part of total enrollment
1996: 75 % white/17 % black
2006: 84 % white/7 % black
Percentage of students from Hampton Roads
1996: 81 %
2006: 34 %
Percentage of part-time students
1996: 36 %
2006: 8 %
