The survey specifically focused on how university leaders boost their annual income by sitting on corporate boards, for which they receive board earnings.

In addition to the $861,979 in compensation that Chancellor Wrighton received last year from Washington University, he also received $548,734 from sitting on the corporate boards for Corning Incorporated, Brooks Automaton and Cabot Corporation, bringing his total income to $1,410,713.

Other university leaders who made the list include John L. Hennessy of Stanford University—who sits on the boards of Google and Cisco Systems, Ruth J. Simmons from Brown University who sits on the boards of Goldman Sachs and Texas Instruments and Richard C. Levin of Yale University who is on the board of American Express.

In terms of college compensation, Chancellor Wrighton is the sixth highest earner out of the 10 university leaders in the survey. His additional board compensation, though, brought him to fourth, behind Hennessy, Levin, and Shirley M. Tilghman of Princeton University.

Glenn MacDonald, an economics professor at Olin Business School, said it is not unusual for university leaders to sit on corporate boards, as they are usually very intelligent individuals in charge of large organizations.

“Corporations want them because they provide a different perspective coming from an educational background,” MacDonald said. “They frequently have a different way of looking at things that makes them valuable.”

Of the 10 top university leaders on the list, Wrighton is the only one to sit on three different corporate boards; the others sit on either one or two.

MacDonald explained that Wrighton is a desirable candidate for a corporate board position because of how he has proven himself an “academic rock star” who has risen to take charge of an organization with a $5 billion endowment.

“If you’re a washed-up professor, no one’s going to pay you to be on their board” MacDonald said. “But if you’re a really important scientist from a relevant area running a huge organization? Those are the guys people want on their board.”

Wrighton is unique, MacDonald said, in that he has established himself through academia, while most university leaders are administrators who work their way up.

Steven Givens, associate vice chancellor for public affairs, agreed that Wrighton was a top choice for a corporate board member because of his experience both as a scientist and a recognized leader in higher education.

“In his capacity as a member of the board, he is able to offer all these organizations his scientific knowledge and expertise, his management and strategic planning experience and the wisdom he has gained as the leader of one of the world’s great universities,” Givens wrote in an email to Student Life.

Givens explained that the Chancellor Wrighton’s board service is monitored by the University’s strict conflict of interest policies and internal audit procedures.

In addition to the corporate boards listed in the survey, Givens noted that Chancellor Wrighton also volunteers as a board member for a number of nonprofit organizations.

Editor’s note: The original version of this article stated that The Daily performed the study when in fact it is an investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Student Life regrets the error.

McLeod, 67, has been a part of the Washington University community since 1974, and was named dean of the College of Arts & Sciences in 1992.

“I think he is going to be one of the most revered figures in the history of Washington University. I would say that for everybody who has come to have the opportunity as I have to work closely with him, we all regard him as a role model and a mentor,” Chancellor Mark Wrighton said.

Hundreds of Washington University students, alumni, faculty, administrators and members of the St. Louis community gathered in Brookings Quadrangle on Tuesday night at a candlelight vigil to commemorate McLeod’s passing.

Members of the Washington University community, including Chancellor Wrighton, Ervin scholars and others who knew McLeod spoke at the vigil.

In 2010, a scholarship was set up in McLeod’s name to be given to students who exhibit the qualities he prized most highly: leadership, academic achievement, commitment to serving others and integrity. He was also the director of the Ervin Scholars Program.

A Facebook page entitled the “Dean James E. McLeod Remembrance Page” was created shortly after his death. It features personal memories written by his students and friends. At press time, more than 2,500 people had “liked” it.

The University is planning a formal memorial service for McLeod on Sunday, Oct. 9 at 1:30 p.m. in the Athletic Complex Field House.

This week’s Jazz at Holmes will be dedicated to McLeod.

“Washington University has lost one of its great leaders and he is going to be deeply missed. He will be long remembered,” Wrighton said.

The gains by the University reflect a trend of increased endowment growth across U.S. universities.

The endowment’s recovery is just one sign that the University’s financial situation is slowly improving. And the University’s $150 million scholarship initiative has broken the $100 million mark ahead of schedule, which will allow the admissions office to admit more students with financial need.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, college endowments increased an average of 8.4 percent in 2010 but still lag behind numbers from 2008.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton said in an interview that the growth rate at Washington University is more or less in line with endowment changes at other institutions.

“In terms of spendable money, we’ll still be down on the order of $20 million a year compared to pre-recession,” Wrighton said. “But as of the end of December, our endowment was up with the total return of almost 15 percent.”

The net increase in the endowment was approximately 10 percent, after accounting for the incoming endowment funds that were spent. The rise put the University’s current endowment at $4.47 billion, according to the Post-Dispatch. That’s down from its peak of $5.66 billion in 2007, but it is still the 17th largest endowment in the nation.

Wrighton noted that the endowment growth will allow for increases in usable funds for the first time in three years but added that the change may not be enough for many professors who have taken repeated annual pay cuts of 4 percent.

“The board [of trustees] said in December the spending from the endowment can go up by 1 percent,” Wrighton said. “That’s nice, but if you’re a professor here and you’re doing well and you have an endowed professorship, it’s likely you’re looking for a more than 1 percent increase in compensation.”

That 1 percent amounts to a $2.3 million increase in spending this year.

The endowment began to decline in 2008 as the nation experienced a recession. This decline caused the University to slow construction and freeze pay. Departments across the University took cuts as well.

Although the University has faced tough economic times, a scholarship initiative, Opening Doors to the Future has raised $102.9 million since it started in November 2009. The initiative originally aimed to raise $150 million by June 2014, in part to ensure that students whose families faced difficult financial situations due to the recession could still afford to attend. Its time frame has now been moved up to June 2012.

“We obviously feel good about that, but we have a long way to go, and we hope to do it sooner than we said we would,” Wrighton said.

The money will go to financial aid and scholarships.

“Scholarship support is clearly essential to support economic diversity among the families that are being represented by their children,” Wrighton said. “The success of our scholarship initiative is a major factor for how far we can go.”

He said that even though the admissions office is not need-blind, it does prioritize affordability.

“[There are] three goals in the admissions program: quality, diversity and affordability,” Wrighton said. “And affordability is both the University’s ability to afford the first two and affordability for the students and their families.”

He added that a couple years ago, the University began to provide full support without loans for families with incomes under $60,000. He hopes that in the future, the University will be able to support even more families.

“We see this year the prospect [of] investing more in financial aid, and we can’t spend that which we don’t have, as is being revealed around the country,” Wrighton said. “So it’s a balance.”

The Senior Class Council released a YouTube video last week encouraging graduating seniors to donate to the scholarship fund as part of the class gift. The video features seniors and the chancellor dancing to the song “Teach Me How to Dougie,” redubbed “Teach Me How to Donate.”

In spite of the poor economic climate, the University has received gifts for academic pursuits as well. Most notably, the John C. Danforth Center for Religion & Politics was created with a $30 million gift from the Danforth Foundation in December 2009. At the time, it was the largest gift of its kind nationally.

“Yesterday was a bull market, and today is a bear market,” Wrighton said.

We do, however, want to make note of the hypocrisy inherent in this pledge, given Washington University’s continued affiliation with Peabody Energy and Arch Coal.

Gregory Boyce and Steven F. Leer are the CEOs of Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, respectively, and both serve on Washington University’s Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees is arguably the most influential force on the University: The trustees appoint the Chancellor, review and approve annual budgets and major capital expenditures, make final decisions on awards of tenure and degrees and on new degree programs, oversee the management of the endowment, and oversee and participate in development programs. In short, the trustees are responsible for overseeing almost every policy aspect of Washington University and thus are the steering force behind the operations of the administration, faculty and staff.

Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world, has long been highlighted as a major environmental offender. Peabody actively opposed the Clean Air Act in 1970 and acid rain provisions in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, as well as current efforts to strengthen mercury provisions. Many major executives of Peabody Energy head up the National Coal Council, which called for more than doubling U.S. coal consumption by 2025 in a recent report.

Last year, Peabody spent a total of $5 million lobbying Congress and other government agencies in an effort to block prospective climate legislation.

Arch Coal, the second-largest provider of coal in the U.S. behind Peabody, has been called into question for its practice of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, which reduces the height of mountaintops, removes all vegetation and contaminates mountain streams with mining waste. This contamination leads to flooding, erosion and an unsafe water supply, which in turn leads to the depopulation and disintegration of mining communities.

The “Peabody Plan” for eliminating energy inequality, released last fall, asks that at least half of the next generation be fueled by coal. It calls for replacing traditional coal plants with supercritical and ultra-supercritical plants, which are more efficient and carbon capture ready, and mandates that at least 100 major projects around the world capture, store or use carbon dioxide from coal-based plants within 20 years. It edicts the deployment of significant coal-to-gas, coal-to-chemicals and coal-to-liquids projects around the world over the next 10 years and heralds more efficient coal utilization technologies as the key to reducing the environmental impact of human energy use.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), however, estimates that if current petroleum usage is replaced by coal-to-liquids projects with no change in carbon technologies, greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 119 percent. If carbon capture and storage technologies are employed, the EPA predicts that greenhouse gas emissions will still increase by 4 percent. It would seem, based on these numbers, that the Peabody Plan’s primary objective is continued coal profits—not sustainability.

Washington University’s endorsement of strategies similar to those promoted by Peabody became clear in 2009, when Peabody, Arch Coal and Ameren UE, whose former CEO is also on the Board of Trustees, contributed a total of $12 million to help found the Washington University Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The Consortium seeks to advance research on carbon recapture and sequestration technology—in short, finding new and more efficient ways to use energy obtained from coal.

When asked about Washington University’s connection to Peabody and Arch Coal in an interview with Student Life in the fall of 2009, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said, “This is big business and we need all the help we can get. The carbon providers—by the opinions of others—maybe they’re the bad guys, but there’s no other game in town.” He continued, “We can’t take something off the table until we come to grips with our ability to meet the power demands that we require.”

We ask that Wrighton cease shying away from the dangers of the continued use of coal and the problems posed by the “Peabody Plan,” in particular the goals for coal-to-liquids projects. We find it patronizing that Washington University would ask us to sign a pledge for sustainable actions when its most powerful governing body does not seem to prioritize sustainability.

We also sincerely hope that, in keeping with the spirit of this pledge, students will direct activism at Washington University’s continued investment of resources in research on coal-based technologies—resources that, we feel, would be better directed at research that seeks to discover and implement new energy sources that do not harm our environment.

Courtesy of Alwyn Loh

Alumni (L-R) Grace Lee (’08), Alwyn Loh (’09), Thomas Lew (’09) and Max Gostelow (’08) pose for a photo with Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton at the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore.

The Chancellor, the deans from each school within the University, three faculties members and a handful of other staff members attended the proceedings in Singapore, along with about 25 other Asian members of the Council and their guests.

Asian students comprise two-thirds of the University’s international population.

The Council is one-of-a-kind and serves to boost the University’s ties to Asia.

“Our program is unique,” Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton wrote in an email to Student Life. “No other university in the United States has such a sustained record of engagement by its senior leadership. It has contributed to our rise in stature internationally and has been key to our developing strong relationships throughout Asia.”

The group stayed at the Marina Bay Sands hotel, and the council lasted for two to three days. Some of the members toured around other parts of Asia as well.

According to Wrighton, the final cost of the trip has not been tallied, but should be around $200,000. The money pays for the meetings for University participants, who were each also allowed to bring a guest.

Council members paid for their own airfare.

The Council consists of 35 to 40 people who live in Asia and to whom the University has close ties. These include alumni, parents, trustees and other friends of the University.

“The rationale for a focus on Asia is the large and growing population, the economic growth of the region and the interest in institutions of higher education based in the United States,” the Chancellor wrote. “Many United States headquartered corporations have interests in Asia, and we need to prepare our students for an understanding of this part of the world in order to best serve these corporations.”

The Council has been meeting every 18 months or so since its formation during the 1995-1996 academic year.

The previous council established the framework for the McDonnell International Scholars Academy. The program selects 12 to 15 international scholars pursuing graduate or professional degrees each year to study at the University. These scholars are also paired with mentors.

This year’s meeting reinforced the importance of the McDonnell program.

The group was also able to announce a new $1 million gift to the University from the Lee Foundation in Singapore. The money will endow a McDonnell Scholar from the National University of Singapore.

In addition, the Lee Foundation provided an endowment for a lectureship with the McDonnell program.

According to the Chancellor, these programs will not only benefit international students, but also the University as a whole.

“Meeting in Asia and interacting directly with the people who live and work there has been enormously important to Washington University,” the Chancellor wrote. “We have strengthened our programs and significantly lifted our visibility as one of the most outstanding universities in the United States.”

The group met with the presidents of major universities in Singapore to further understanding among schools.

According to the Chancellor, “These discussions helped us to understand the academic environment in Singapore and how best to build our relations there and in other parts of Asia.”

There is one recent scheduling conflict, however, that we find truly regrettable. This Friday, at 5 p.m., the University will hold the dedication of Brauer Hall and groundbreaking ceremony for Green Hall, the engineering building soon to be built just northeast of Brookings Quad. The ceremony will be held in the adjacent parking lot.

Meanwhile, as nearly every student knows (including those who have been chained to a desk in the Olin Library basement for the past couple of weeks), there will be another event occurring this Friday night in Brookings Quad: W.I.L.D. We feel surprised to have to remind members of the University community of its date, given that W.I.L.D. is the biggest student event of the entire semester and that it happens in the spring at the same time every year. A quick look at the University’s academic calendar would have revealed April 30 to be one of the worst possible dates to choose for the groundbreaking ceremony.

Associate Dean Nick Benassi explained that the date was chosen in concert with the donors and that the engineering school wanted to host the ceremony before classes ended so that faculty and students could attend. We certainly understand that the groundbreaking ceremony faced its own scheduling constraints, but we would have preferred the ceremony take place during reading week or finals than at its chosen time.

We can think of few worse combinations than an outdoor ceremony featuring several of the University’s most important donors and supporters mixed with a loud outdoor concert featuring the student body at its most intoxicated state.

This poor timing would have been less problematic if the ceremony were to be held indoors or even on the other side of campus. Given the ceremony’s location, however, conflicts are inevitable. To their credit, University administrators and Team 31 have worked together to coordinate the two events and have arranged a W.I.L.D. set change during the ceremony. We believe that it would have been better to avoid the overlap in the first place.

We are not asking the University to plan all future events around a crowded calendar of student activities. That would be absurd. Still, this strikes us as one scheduling conflict that needed to be avoided.

I write to you on the eve of a very important day for Washington University and the St. Louis region, and I write to ask for your support.

On Tuesday, April 6, registered voters in St. Louis County will have the opportunity to vote on Proposition A, a half-cent sales tax increase to support the operation and expansion of the Metro system. The tax will raise approximately $75 million annually, and the passage of the county tax will trigger an already-approved tax in the city of St. Louis. Passing Proposition A will secure needed revenue to restore service cuts, expand both bus and rail routes, and operate Call-A-Ride vans that are used by the disabled and elderly to access health care and other services. Without the additional revenue provided by the tax increase, public transit service will be cut by as much as 50 percent, and many workers will be left without access to their jobs.

Public transportation is vital to creating a strong, vibrant region, and it is critical to our future success at Washington University. Many of our employees count on MetroBus and MetroLink to get to and from work. Our students use public transportation not only to move between our campuses, but also to explore all the wonderful places in our city. Supporting public transportation in St. Louis means supporting the future excellence of Washington University.

Tomorrow, I plan to vote “yes” on Proposition A, and I hope those of you who are eligible to vote in St. Louis County will consider joining me in making an important statement about the future of public transportation in St. Louis. Together, we can take this important step forward for our University and our region.

Sincerely,
Mark S. Wrighton

Mark Wrighton is the chancellor of Washington University. He can be reached via e-mail at wrighton@wustl.edu.

Wash. U. Students for Proposition A, Green Action, the Performing Arts Department collaborated to organize an improvisational flash mob dance in front of the Danforth University Center. The dance was meant to raise awareness of the upcoming April 6 vote on Proposition A, which will support St. Louis public transit. The Chancellor was among the participants.

In February, Chancellor Mark Wrighton sent a campus-wide e-mail regarding financial cutbacks that would take place in the coming year. After University-wide cuts in spending, libraries on campus have experienced reductions in staff and a streamlining of services.

“The library reduced their budget by a targeted amount with a combination of compensation and other expense reductions,” said Barbara Feiner, the vice chancellor for finance. “Departments approached their budget challenges by targeting efficiencies that would have the least possible effect on service levels.”

Because of the hard financial times that have fallen across the nation, 25 part-time and full-time jobs across the University were cut. Among those were the jobs of librarians. According to the chancellor’s message, 25 unfilled positions were cut as well. Reductions in staffing combined with cuts in administrative spending are expected to trim annual spending by $10 million.

Six library staff positions were lost because of budget cuts; University officials would not discuss which specific library departments were affected. They did admit that reductions were made at Olin Library and departmental libraries. University departmental libraries serve academic interests, including art and architecture, business, chemistry, and earth and planetary sciences.

“Making decisions about staff reductions is always difficult,” said Shirley Baker, vice chancellor for scholarly resources and dean of University Libraries. “However, how libraries deliver service is always changing, based on scholarly interests, user needs and technological change. So, we have a lot of practice in examining every position and redeploying staff as needs change.”

According to Baker, in addition to the six eliminated positions, several library staff members have elected to work shorter weeks or years, and the workload has been distributed among remaining staff. At times, students and faculty may experience slower service.

“Universities and libraries across the country are experiencing the same economic pressures we are here at Wash. U. It is difficult for all of us,” Baker said. “The libraries took the same budget reductions as other units of the University.”

In addition to staff losses, University Libraries will also alter some services to lessen spending. For example, fewer bound print journals will be available as more are offered online. Technology services supported by the Danforth endowment have also been trimmed because of a reduction in those funds.

“Our purchasing power for scholarly materials is reduced, and we will be working with faculty across the University to make adjustments in what we acquire,” Baker said.

To assist library staff in navigating the budget cuts, Edward Macias, provost and the executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, appointed a faculty committee to work with Baker and her staff. The committee will begin work in early April.

In an email to the University community on Monday afternoon, Chancellor Mark Wrighton laid out the results of the administration’s efforts to cut costs while continuing to develop the school’s endowment for fiscal year 2011 and beyond.

Wrighton highlighted some measures that have been taken to reduce expenditures. Among other initiatives, the cost plan for fiscal year 2011 includes the elimination of 25 part-time and full-time employment opportunities in addition to approximately 25 unoccupied positions.

“These human resource reductions have occurred in central administrative areas and in the Danforth Campus schools,” Wrighton wrote. “Individuals who have lost their jobs were given advance notice, severance, and job search assistance…Overall, reductions in staffing and in non-personnel administrative expense in the central administration alone have reduced annual expenses by about $10 million, a 6.5% reduction, over a 2-year period.”

In addition, the administration earlier this year decided to eliminate the print version of The Record, what used to be a weekly newsletter highlighting events and people in the community. Now, The Record publishes exclusively online daily.

“In this instance [ending print publication of The Record], it is arguably the case that we have simultaneously reduced expenses, improved the effectiveness of our communications, and reduced the amount of paper consumed,” Wrighton said.

Other budget changes include the changing of health benefits programs, a reduction of spending on library materials, improved automation and distribution of personnel forms, reduction in landscape work, and improvements in energy efficiency. Particularly with regard to energy, the administration plans to install more automatic lights controls and more energy-efficient lighting in the buildings throughout campus and the South 40 residential area.

Despite the reduction in many of the University’s expenditures, Wrighton echoed the idea that both the academic programs and the financial aid availability at the University remain strong. He argued that the University remains committed to supporting those who cannot fund their education alone.

“We will continue to support the financial aid needs of our students,” Wrighton wrote. “Even though there are signs of a recovering economy, we know the recovery is uneven and additional financial aid resources will be needed in the future. We will continue to respond to changing needs in financial aid for students so they can complete their degree programs at Washington University.”

To achieve these ends, the University has ventured on the fundraising initiative Opening Doors to the Future: The Scholarship Initiative for Washington University. The goal is to raise $150 million by midyear 2014. So far, the University has raised $35 million.

In addition, the University has received numerous donations over the past year, including $30 for the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics and over $100 million from the stimulus bill.

Students were disappointed in the cutbacks.

“Obviously change needs to be made so you have to do what you have to do,” freshman Sondra Polonsky said.

Others see waste in places that aren’t being addressed.

“I think that [the University] probably should spend their money places other than landscaping all the time,” junior Doug Richardson said. “Instead of putting in new grass every few days, they could spend it on something more useful.”

According to Wrighton’s letter, the endowment has been on a slow but steady rise over the current academic year. Since July 1 of last year, the endowment has gone up by 10 percent; but Wrighton noted that the board of trustees predicts that the endowment will decline by $10 million over the next year.

With additional reporting by Michelle Merlin