Shortly after his State of the College address to the Columbia community on March 12, President Warrick L. Carter had a little more to say about where the college stands amidst a touch economic climate.

The Chronicle sat down with Carter in his office on the fifth floor of the Alexandroff Campus Center, 600 S. Michigan Ave., to further discuss the state of the college, including how the faculty hiring freeze will affect students, diversity in the Columbia community and how Carter balances his responsibilities as president of the college.

In October you announced a hiring freeze for all faculty and staff, in response to the economic downturn. But with enrollment increasing rapidly and students far outnumbering the number of full-time faculty, don’t students need faculty now more than ever?

The answer is yes. We need faculty and we need staff. But the growth has been historic, and it’s whether or not the growth will continue into the coming years. When you make a decision to hire a faculty member you do a national search, and in many cases the people you choose to hire are people outside the region. So you have them move to the, and I want to make sure that we can be good to them and keep them here. And so I need to make sure that this growth is going to continue, and it would be unfair for us to hire five, 10 faculty  members this year and have to let them go next year because there’s a downturn. Clearly the people we would let go first are those who were most recently hired.

What we have been doing with faculty positions is that we have this year had replacement positions, and so anyone who left we filled those positions. But in terms of new positions with both faculty and staff, Louise [Love, vice president of Academic Affairs,] mentioned today that we’ve been hiring 5-10 new faculty a year ever since I arrived. I started that process. At the same time we’ve had an equal number of staff, and it’s been mostly academic staff, Academic and Student Affairs, that’s where the growth has been at the college. The prudent thing to do right now is to watch where we are so we don’t have to disappoint people later on on the back end of it.

What will happen if enrollment does go up?

We will revisit the freeze. Steve [Kapelke, provost and senior vice president,] and Louise and I have talked about where in the fall semester we could get a real good sense of where we are and whether or not I can release some positions back, because it takes a full year to hire a faculty member because of the national searches. They only start in September. So therefore we would start the searches probably end of the early spring term with the start date of September. It takes that kind of time.

Does the number of faculty members from out of the region differ from department to department?

It does, it really does. I started in 2000, and in 2001 I had Steve Kapelke. He and I both decided at that time that [we had] too many faculty with the same credentials. It didn’t mean the credentials weren’t good; it meant that too many with the same credentials, and by that I mean they were from local institutions. So we decided that we really needed national and global credentials, because we’re a global insinuation. That’s when we began to hire and search nationally. So some departments have added more faculty since that period of time so consequentially their faculty would reflect that kind of national credentials as opposed to other departments.

Does that also reflect on the increasing number of students coming in from out-of-state?

Yeah it has. Our whole growth has had a direct relationship with our growing as a residential institution. Five, maybe six years ago, we could only house about 350 kids. We knew the interest was there, and we started a national campaign in terms of recruitment that hadn’t existed before. And Mark [Kelly, vice president of Student Affairs,] and Murphy [Monroe, executive director of Admissions,] and his people were telling us the interest is there but we have no place to put them. Parents are very leery about sending their kids to downtown Chicago and not knowing where they’re going, especially in freshman year. Once we did the deal and built the University Center, we began to advertise that we have rooms. And that first year, we had 600 beds in UCC. They went at the drop of a hat, so much so that we then did the deal immediately with 2 E. 8th St. We went from housing 300-and-some students one year to 1,700 the very next year.

So I would say that that has had a direct relationship to that growth. The word got out there, that if you want to go to Columbia, there is a place to be housed, and we didn’t have those places before. Now we have over 3,000 students on campus.

With more students living on campus now, where do plans for a student center stand?

That clearly is the second priority. In fact, immediately after we broke ground on this building [Media Production Center], Eric Winston [vice president of Institutional Advancement] and I were already talking about the next campaign. The next campaign is for the student center.

It’s not just the student center that’s important. It’s the concept that we have called the campus center. And in that building, where Buddy Guy’s is located right now, that clearly is the center of the campus. We would move into that building in addition to student activities and student services. We would also move all the top floors all of Liberal Arts and Sciences. So it would guarantee that 90 percent of the students would have to access that building at one time or another in their lives. And that would clearly become the hub of the campus. What happens is that students have a tendency to separate themselves in their little cubbyholes. I’m a blank, whatever that blank is, so I spend all of my time in my building. And I leave my building only to go take that English class, and I run back to my building as soon as I possibly can. But a campus center will kind of serve to even more galvanize the campus together.

What efforts are being made to bring in students who are having difficulty choosing between private and public institutions?

We can’t really compete with publics. We really can’t. Take the same student who has financial need, and he’s from the state of Illinois. The money he gets from the state and the feds will pay tuition. And so therefore, that same student who qualifies for the same amount of money will have an amount still outstanding at any private. For us it’s probably about $7,000, $8000. What we’ve tried to do, and that’s the reason we’re putting more money into the scholarship fund, is to bridge that gap that exists. And so the new funds that we’re putting into the scholarship, it’s about 4.5 million.

Many other private institutions have discounting programs that actually make tuition lower than Columbia’s. Why doesn’t the college discount?

We don’t want to go down the discounting road. What that has been is that you jack your tuition up very high, extremely high, then you discount. So you have 40 percent of the people at the college who pay full tuition, then they’re paying the remaining for the others. So the actual tuition is 25,000, and the true tuition is 20,000, because those folks are helping the others.

We decided we didn’t want to discount and go down that road, that we would try to keep our entire tuition down for everybody. So if you look at our actual “sticker price” tuition, we’d be at 18,500 this coming fall. Our approach has been to have a tuition that is relatively approachable for everybody, then we offer support. Rather than have it to be approached in that way, we’ve put actual funds into the budget and then take those funds out and pay ourselves. So we don’t do a discount. Discounting means that you pay one price, and I pay another one. But we don’t want to go to that huge discounting practice at all. We’ve tried to stay away from it. Granted what we’re doing now is that in this economy, at this time, during this place and the history of the college and the history of the world, we need to figure out some ways to get funds to students who have needs.

Many students have complaints about Student Financial Services and the disconnect between them and information about scholarships. How will you bridge that gap?

I was not aware that that was a disconnect. We now know, and so we’ll look into that.

What initiatives are there for nontraditional students who are not coming to Columbia straight out of high school or from other colleges?

We haven’t done much; honestly we haven’t. Our concentration has been on traditional students as we become more of a traditional institution. All of our programs that we put into place haven’t been that pressing yet.

Will you be addressing it in the future?

Clearly, because we are aware that as the war comes down and more and more [veterans] will be coming back is that there are going to be great needs for nontraditional students.

Will the college be participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program [see “A service overlooked in our March 2 issue]?

I’m not sure if we are or not. It hasn’t gotten up to me yet. We’re looking for ways of attracting students. We’ve been the kind of institution that’s been very welcoming to a variety of students, and we want to do that, as well. We still have to be very concerned about our bottom lines, so we’ll look at it, we’ll see what the finances are, etcetera, etcetera.

What are you concerned about for the upcoming accreditation visit?

When I was interviewed for this job, they showed me the list of things that the team had said we need to address. They said, “Warrick, can you help us address them.” I looked at the list, and I felt very comfortable with that list. And we’ve addressed them all. The only concern I have is that every institution thinks that they are unique, but we are unique. And it’s making sure that people get us and understand us.

That’s the only issue I’m ever concerned about is to get a team that comes from extremely traditional institutions, extremely conservative institutions, not being urban institutions. There’s a whole different way of approaching things, a whole different life and rhythm that happens on an urban campus, as opposed to people coming to us from some place in the middle of a corn field. The things that we do for our students and the things they do are completely different. I really think if they read us, look at our goals and objectives, look at our mission, and look at the ways in which we are trying to meet that, then we’ll be fine.

You’ve made so many changes to the college’s structures and systems of operating since you arrived in 2000. Do you ever face any push and pull with some of the community at Columbia who have been here for decades?

[Laughs] Yes, it’s um, it’s not always roses. As right as you think you are, there are people who aren’t always going to agree. The whole issue of [developing] schools was not easy. We had a large amount of pushback. In fact, I put my job on the line. I told the College Council that I wanted this done, and if I didn’t get that support I was going to do it anyway or leave. And I really meant that. Because we clearly could not do what we wanted to do as an institution with that old system.

So as I look back over these past years, we restructured every unit of the college. Student Affairs did not exist before I got here. I’m pleased with what’s happened with Student Affairs, and there were no student organizations. I mean you name it, we’ve changed it. And I think changed it for the best. So it hasn’t always been easy, but as we look back over it I think even those who were saying, “No,” and pushing back will begrudgingly say, “Well, gosh, they were halfway right.”

Diversity among students has been increasing along with enrollment, but how do you feel about diversity among faculty? The numbers are staggeringly low.

I had Human Resources do a study to take a look at faculty and staff in terms of where we were, and we looked at the hiring over the past three years. I was not pleased with what we saw. And so we have charged the deans and Human Resources and so forth to be aggressive to do opportunity hiring if we have to have it, to look at nontraditional places to go and find faculty. Sometimes you have to raid other people. Most of the Hispanic faculty are going to be found in the southwest and California, and sometimes you just have to go and raid those schools and find them.

What about your vice presidents? It’s hard not to notice that it’s not a very diverse cabinet [all but one are white].

It’s diverse in terms of gender. In fact, the males are the minority in my cabinet, which is kind of interesting. I wonder how that happened. But it did. But clearly yes. We don’t have any positions available now, but that’s in the back of my mind, as well.

Why aren’t you more present to students?

I think about that. I think about the demand of my time and where it’s best to use it. I interact with students in a variety of different ways.

We’ve got 12,000 students. [There’s] no way possible for the president to be known by all 12,000 students. Because if I was, then I wouldn’t be doing my job. My job is not to be on campus. In fact, the board [of trustees] expects me to be on campus less and less. Because I can’t do a main part of my job behind the desk. And that’s the reason I have people who are to be here. So as you ask students about me, if they didn’t know Mark, then we haven’t done it right. If you ask faculty about Louise, that’s who they’re supposed to see. If you ask staff about Ellen [Krutz, vice president of Human Resources,] that’s who they should know. It’s nice that they know me and I’d like to get around as much as I possibly can. I go to concerts, I go to exhibits, I go to a variety of activities, but half the time I’m not in town.

Half the time I’m not here. It used to be that a college president “ran the school” and would have teas for students. In the old days it was tea and crumpets on Sunday afternoon. And you were around campus all the time. But in today’s world, college presidents spend probably 60 to 70 percent of that time raising money as the face of the college. Whether we like it or not, I’m the face of the institution. I’m the voice of the institution. I’m the one who they want to meet with and talk to and respond to. There are a lot of people who won’t give money to an institution until they meet the president. The whole staff will work with a prospective donor for a good period of time, and they say, “When am I going to meet the president?” They want to make sure you’re the face, you’re the “visionary” and you’re the one we’re giving the money to. We have a prospect in California who wanted to give the check to me. So I would like to be known by the students more, and we do as much as we possibly can.

This coming Sunday, and this isn’t something I want to do on Sunday afternoons and evenings, but I’ve got to go to Springfield. It’s no fun. There is nothing to see. But that’s where the state makes its decisions. So we’re going we have a meeting with the president of the senate to talk to him about us, and the only way I can do it is to get on that road and go down to Springfield. There’s probably something on campus on Sunday, something on campus on Monday that I would much rather do, than being in a car riding down to Springfield for a 45-minute meeting and then turn around and come back to Chicago. But you do what you have to do.

You can say to students that I’d love to spend more time with them, but unfortunately I just can’t always do it. Now if you can figure out a way to clone me, then I’ll send one Warrick to do that and the other Warrick to do the other things.