TCNJ

19 FALL 2022 I'll start with a wide-open question: Your impression on four years as president of TCNJ? The College of New Jersey lives up to what it says it is. The education is exceptional. The community is genuine and caring. The faculty and staff are supremely talented. The students are intellectually curious, dedicated, and fun. What were your initial priorities? I was following President Barbara Gitenstein, who in her 19 years at the helm had accelerated progress on a trajectory of excellence and brought about an exceptional academic trans- formation, now a signature of the college. The community was ready to take the college to the next level, but we needed to define what that looked like. I also saw there were headwinds in higher education that TCNJ would have to face, and I wanted to be sure we were prepared to weather them. What were some of the headwinds you saw? How has higher education changed in the past five to 10 years? I'd start by saying the credential of a college degree remains important. It is a significant qualification for lifelong success. But in terms of public opinion, the sands are shifting. More people are asking: Is a college degree worth it? More pressing, there are fewer traditional-age students today than there were 10 years ago. College enrollments peaked around 2011 in the United States, and they've been going down since. They are about to go down more dramatically, starting in 2026, due to a downturn in U.S. birth rates that began around the 2008 economic recession. Fewer students means greater competition to enroll them. The Ivy League institutions and other elite private schools will fill their classes, and in some cases, will pull top students who used to choose TCNJ. Not surprisingly, many colleges are Entering her fifth year as college president, Kathryn Foster defines a strategy to keep TCNJ at the forefront of higher education. Interview Christopher Hann As president of The College of New Jersey, Kathryn Foster has steered the campus community through the morass of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of the college. Yet she's also confronted a shifting landscape affecting higher education nationally. To address those changes, she led an effort to update the college's strategic plan, titled TCNJ 2027: Extending Our Excellence. And she has committed to creating a more racially and ethnically diverse campus, resulting in another mission document, We Are TCNJ: A Strategy for Inclusive Excellence. On a steamy day in July, as she prepared for another year on campus, President Foster sat for a wide-ranging interview focused largely on what's ahead for The College of New Jersey. PAR EXCELLENCE "We had to step back and take a new look at the norms of the college and how we might do things differently." 5 19 FALL 2022 REBECCA NOWALSKI

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