The following was published in Inside Higher Ed on July 1st, written by Scott Jaschik. Original article here

Antioch College is poised to come back.

On Tuesday, leaders of the college’s alumni association and the Antioch
University Board of Trustees — which suspended operations of the college a
year ago — agreed on a plan to make the college fully independent of the
university. The college will gain its campus, the endowment (about $19
million), the ability to use its name, and the literary journal The Antioch
Review. Most important to many, the college will have its own board and will
not answer in any way to the university. The college’s alumni supporters
will pay the university about $6 million in return for the assets being
turned over.

Leaders of the college alumni group anticipate admitting a new class of
students — 100 at first — in two years.

Before the process can move ahead, various regulators need to sign off on
the plans, but approval is expected. The deal ends two years of intense
negotiations to save the college — a process that alternated between
enthusiasm and recrimination as various efforts moved forward and fell
apart. The negotiations were revived and advanced in recent months with help
of the Great Lakes College Association, whose involvement was praised by
both the university and the college for keeping the talks going.

My first question is… how are you doing ?

I’m doing well. This has been a very busy period in a very busy year. And I’ve been spending most of my time doing fundraising, travelling, getting ourselves in order in that way.

The task force met on Sunday in NY, with Toni and Art; how would you describe the atmosphere of the meeting?

Very positive, very focused on the specific steps that we have to take to make this separation happen and to prepare… both boards for making a really monumentous and important decision.

The press release talks about June 30th as the latest possible date for the resolution, do you anticipate and earlier resolution?

I think the hope is that it would be earlier. The date of the 30th relates to the hopeful transfer of the college, so that’s the conclusion that we’ve all hoped for and worked for hoped for in these past two years-that the college would ultimately be independent and that’s the date that’s critical to that. So if the definitive agreements come about sooner that’s what we’d like to see happen. Going beyond that date becomes problematic for everyone.

When will the ACCC get its 501(c)3?

Well, we’re all filed and it’s really in the hands of the Internal Revenue Service but we sought as much help as we can in moving that process along so I don’t know the answer to that but we hope very quickly.

Open Letter to The Board Pro Tem
(CC’d to the entire Save Antioch! community)
As I write this letter, there has been no new word on the Definitive Agreements between the Board Pro Tempore of Antioch College and the Board of Trustees of Antioch University. This, to me, is not an issue, as my point revolves more around the end of the ninety-day period which began in January. If the deal falls through, then the rest of this letter becomes moot. If not, however, then my arguments stand, regardless of where we are in the process.

I will begin by inviting my readers to take a trip with me back through time. It’s late in the year 2007. The Alumni Board of Antioch College and the Board of Trustees of Antioch University have come to an agreement in principle that Antioch College will stay open, but donors are balking and many members of the Antioch community (on- and off-campus) have grave misgivings about the way in which the Trustees are moving forward.

Among the biggest of those misgivings: the Trustees’ continued threats to reduce faculty and staff, despite the unpopularity of the idea among Antiochians. (Also, their refusal to recruit first-year students for Fall ‘08.)

[scribd id=14578868 key=key-1m1e1vgcet0cguwzdjae]

SECURING ACCREDITATION AND DEGREE GRANTING AUTHORITY APRIL 22, 2009

Introduction

Antioch College, as a part of Antioch University, was accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association for the purpose of awarding accredited degrees and was approved by the Ohio Board of Regents to grant degrees in the state of Ohio. Antioch College students enrolled in this accredited and approved institution were eligible to apply for federal financial aid administered by the U.S. Department of Education. Antioch College was also listed by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program of the Department of Homeland Security as approved for international students seeking visas to attend Antioch College.

With the closing of the College in June 2008, except for the ability of students to complete their degrees by December 2008, accreditation has ended. Early in its deliberations, the Board Pro Tempore of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation decided to engage an experienced higher education administrator to investigate what will be required for a re-opened Antioch College to regain its accreditation and approvals.

Our purpose in posting what we have learned in some detail is to foster a shared awareness and understanding of the initial challenges we will face if we are to achieve our goal of re-opening an Antioch College that continues its traditions of being a vibrant, unique, and important institution able to educate coming generations of students to win victories for humanity.

Overview

Why did you agree to be a Pro Tem Board member?

Well, of course I’m in a somewhat different position from other Pro Tem Board members because I am there ex officio as the president of the Antioch College Alumni Association. And of course, we could go back to 2000 to talk about why I am on the Antioch College Alumni Association. I’ve actually been on the board, the alumni board, since 2000, and was elected first vice-president, served as vice-president for four years, and now in my second two-year term as president of the board. I was on the University Board of Trustees, as an ex officio member, until February 18th when the board was reconstituted as a Board of Governors with individual subordinate boards for the campuses in the Antioch University system. At that point I was off the board because there was no longer a position in the bylaws for Antioch College, and I was able to move onto the Board Pro Tem. I had been meeting with the board Pro Tem, and in person meeting in December in New York as an invited guest, so I’d been very much a part of the process.