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Post by bbb on Mar 20, 2015 15:00:55 GMT -5
I'm surprised. People told me in 2013, that this was a "done deal."
ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y., March 20, 2015 — St. Bonaventure University and Hilbert College today announced the conclusion of their integration efforts and agreed to continue to collaborate on key strategic initiatives in keeping with their 20-year partnership.
While the schools are no longer investigating direct integration, they continue to pursue opportunities that emerged over the past 18 months.
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Post by bbb on Mar 20, 2015 15:02:53 GMT -5
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Post by wgt on Mar 20, 2015 16:43:03 GMT -5
Whenever you see the words "DONE DEAL" on the Bandwagon take with a 1/4 grain of salt.
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Post by az63 on Mar 20, 2015 17:38:47 GMT -5
We need pinnum to tell us how & why this played out as it did
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Post by az63 on Mar 20, 2015 17:41:18 GMT -5
firstdev probably wants to weigh in also.
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Post by jh on Mar 21, 2015 8:37:20 GMT -5
Buffalo News article - also offers zero information of what the major factors/hurdles were that made the deal go south after 18 months of study ($$$)
The Buffalo News.com City & Region Hilbert and St. Bonaventure won’t merge after all BY: Jay Tokasz
Published: March 20, 2015, 04:13 PM
Updated: March 20, 2015, 04:13 PM An 18-month courtship between Hilbert College and St. Bonaventure University has ended without a marriage proposal.
In separate votes Thursday and Friday, the boards of trustees of both schools decided not to move ahead with a merger of the two institutions.
The two Catholic schools began studying the possibility of a merger in 2013, as a way of confronting the challenging demographics and economics forcing small colleges across the country to reevaluate how they do business. Steps toward combining operations had been mostly incremental and exploratory until this week’s trustee votes, which ended any further discussion of a legal merger of the two institutions.
“As we came to this month’s decision point, we arrived at different conclusions about the best way to structure an alliance,” said Sister Margaret Carney, president of St. Bonaventure University, in a statement.
The schools announced the decision of the trustees in a joint statement this afternoon and scheduled a news conference for Saturday.
Hilbert, a campus of 1,100 students on South Park Avenue in Hamburg, and St. Bonaventure, which has about 2,300 students on its campus near Olean, agreed to continue to collaborate on “key strategic initiatives.” The schools, which share a Franciscan heritage, have had a 20-year partnership in which St. Bonaventure offers weekend graduate-level classes out of its Buffalo Center, on the Hilbert campus.
Hilbert President Cynthia A. Zane said the two schools share similar missions and “will continue to examine other collaborative academic program opportunities that were identified during this process by an ad hoc group of highly talented faculty from both institutions.”
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Post by Ladderman on Mar 21, 2015 11:31:19 GMT -5
Someone about a year or so back told me a big stumbling block would be the relatively high proportion of tenured faculty SBU has as opposed to Hilbert. Don't know if this was part of the deal-break. But despite being part of the larger Franciscan family, the two schools have different cultures and histories and a co-existence of both identities would not be easy.
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Post by jh on Mar 21, 2015 16:33:04 GMT -5
Someone about a year or so back told me a big stumbling block would be the relatively high proportion of tenured faculty SBU has as opposed to Hilbert. Don't know if this was part of the deal-break. But despite being part of the larger Franciscan family, the two schools have different cultures and histories and a co-existence of both identities would not be easy. The truth is after informing alums along the way ,,in the end it does not happen and offer no explanation of why....none ! Pat us on the head and move along - disregard all those prior phone calls and press releases. So a vacuum is created - allowing poor/inaccurate opinion and made up 'facts' to fill it - then the university will complain about the rumor and conjecture. New idea - Mass Comm 101 - fill the vacuum before others do - tell us what the key points were that could not be agreed upon. How much money was spent/wasted on this 'discovery'? I am guessing quite a bit since most of the press releases were dedicated to telling us what they got out of the effort except the obvious goal - an actual merger. But again - I am GUESSING - why? because i was offered no information...
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Post by bbb on Mar 22, 2015 13:05:56 GMT -5
I really would like to know the reasons for this not happening.
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Post by sneakers on Mar 22, 2015 18:32:18 GMT -5
I really would like to know the reasons for this not happening. There was likely a confidentiality agreement in place. In the business world, when mergers do not go forward there is generally an agreement between the two parties not to bad mouth each other, etc.
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Post by fan4ever on Mar 22, 2015 19:39:42 GMT -5
I believe that this announcement was handled well. What on earth good would it do either school to very publicly highlight areas of weakness or potential conflict? Suffice that both Boards thoroughly reviewed all of the data and found a merger unworkable. Happens all the time in the business world. Glad that the schools will continue to collaborate in those areas where there is common ground. The SBU Board/Administration would be well served in taking the lessons learned from this SBU/Hilbert exercise and apply them toward substantially enhanced collaboration with schools like JCC/Empire State College, etc..
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Post by firstdev on Mar 26, 2015 13:03:01 GMT -5
As they say in WWE, that was a very hard smackdown of Sr Margaret and the Fort Duquesne crowd by the Board of Trustees. The Big Merger was her baby, pushed hard by her staff in conjunction with Hilbert's President Zane(I am still awaiting the campus convocation of our community to discuss this issue - she must have forgot with her busy schedule and all, or maybe she just did not care one wit what the community felt about this important issue). This was her signature initiative, and it lost big time. Time now to refocus resources and energy on recruiting more frosh, to get to the 500 frosh goal, and to stop making pathetic excuses as to why that goal can not be achieved (really how many times do we have to hear her mea culpa?). This a special place, one of the most beautiful campuses in America, with a super community of like minded folks, great programs, dedicated faculty, D1 athletics and a very reasonable cost for a private Catholic, traditional education. If she does not want to stay with the program, then let the succession process begin, just like the entrance of Nobles into Cambridge!
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Post by Bona84 on Mar 26, 2015 13:29:24 GMT -5
As they say in WWE, that was a very hard smackdown of Sr Margaret and the Fort Duquesne crowd by the Board of Trustees. The Big Merger was her baby, pushed hard by her staff in conjunction with Hilbert's President Zane(I am still awaiting the campus convocation of our community to discuss this issue - she must have forgot with her busy schedule and all, or maybe she just did not care one wit what the community felt about this important issue). This was her signature initiative, and it lost big time. Time now to refocus resources and energy on recruiting more frosh, to get to the 500 frosh goal, and to stop making pathetic excuses as to why that goal can not be achieved (really how many times do we have to hear her mea culpa?). This a special place, one of the most beautiful campuses in America, with a super community of like minded folks, great programs, dedicated faculty, D1 athletics and a very reasonable cost for a private Catholic, traditional education. If she does not want to stay with the program, then let the succession process begin, just like the entrance of Nobles into Cambridge! Bona's is a very special place. But, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that not everyone is like minded...
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Post by thesenator on Mar 26, 2015 14:49:23 GMT -5
As they say in WWE, that was a very hard smackdown of Sr Margaret and the Fort Duquesne crowd by the Board of Trustees. The Big Merger was her baby, pushed hard by her staff in conjunction with Hilbert's President Zane(I am still awaiting the campus convocation of our community to discuss this issue - she must have forgot with her busy schedule and all, or maybe she just did not care one wit what the community felt about this important issue). This was her signature initiative, and it lost big time. Time now to refocus resources and energy on recruiting more frosh, to get to the 500 frosh goal, and to stop making pathetic excuses as to why that goal can not be achieved (really how many times do we have to hear her mea culpa?). This a special place, one of the most beautiful campuses in America, with a super community of like minded folks, great programs, dedicated faculty, D1 athletics and a very reasonable cost for a private Catholic, traditional education. If she does not want to stay with the program, then let the succession process begin, just like the entrance of Nobles into Cambridge! Bona's is a very special place. But, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that not everyone is like minded... and thank God not everyone is like -minded...can you imagine how much more of a mess bonas would be in if we didn't have a variety of alums, friends of the school, etc that could offer their own distinct amount of time, specialized talents and treasures ranging from 3 bucks to 3 million bucks to give to the school...and just so we don't think it couldn't happen to us, let's all be like-minded on one thing: that it is going to take everyone pitching in their time, talent and treasure so we can keep saying "bonas is a very special place" and not "bonas was a very special place"...
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Post by Hoops83 on Mar 26, 2015 15:11:33 GMT -5
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