Phillip C. Stone believes in the power of a good story.
Storytelling was a key part of Mr. Stone’s fund-raising strategy at Bridgewater College, in Virginia, where he served as president for 16 years, according to Carol A. Scheppard, its vice president for academic affairs.
He is also easily moved by other people’s stories, said Ms. Scheppard, especially ones about students who beat the odds. “He was very efficient about running the institution,” she said, “but you couldn’t trust him with giving away money to students who came in with a hard-luck story.”
The story of Sweet Briar College is a compelling one. The 114-year-old women’s college was marked for death in February, only to be brought back to life, at least for now, by a group of alumnae who raised $21 million in pledges and sued to replace the current administration with one that wants to keep fighting for survival.
Now Mr. Stone has been tapped to write the next chapter. He is expected to take over as president of Sweet Briar next week.
It will not be an easy assignment. Sweet Briar has struggled for years to persuade young women to enroll, offering increasingly generous financial-aid packages that have hurt the college’s tuition revenue. This year the average discount rate on Sweet Briar’s $35,000-per-year tuition was more than 60 percent. Yet only 20 percent of the students accepted into the Class of 2018 chose to attend.
The college’s temporary death sentence, announced in early March, has almost certainly compounded those enrollment challenges. Sweet Briar so far has not said how many students it expects to be on the campus this fall or how many academic programs will be offered.
Mr. Stone declined to be interviewed on Monday. But several former colleagues said that if anyone was capable of turning Sweet Briar’s dance with death into a success story, it is the former Bridgewater president.
“He’s the closest thing to walking on water that I know of,” said Belle S. Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, the accrediting agency that oversees both Bridgewater and Sweet Briar. Mr. Stone served as chairman of the agency from 2007 to 2009.
“He can tell funny stories with the best of them,” she said, but he is “no nonsense when it comes to getting stuff done.”
Healing ‘Open Wounds’
Ms. Wheelan, who counts Mr. Stone as a friend, said Sweet Briar’s new president has his work cut out for him. For starters, the college will have to submit “substantive change” paperwork to the accreditor if it intends to make any major changes in its scope, mission, or faculty roster. That paperwork will be due “immediately, if not sooner,” she said.
“Phil’s going to have to hit the ground running, for sure,” said Ms. Wheelan. “The good news is, he understands our process and knows what to expect. It’s not like a new president coming in from a different region who has no clue what we’re about.”
Higher-education leadership is Mr. Stone’s second act. He was a lawyer for 24 years before being named president of Bridgewater. There he oversaw significant changes in Bridgewater’s administrative structure, according to Ms. Scheppard, and “added programs to meet admissions demand.” The college also added an equestrian center. During his tenure, enrollment at Bridgewater expanded from 882 students to close to 1,700.
Mr. Stone grew to be a respected figure in higher education, serving on several state task forces and acting as chairman of Ms. Wheelan’s accrediting agency. Though not an extrovert by nature, “he’s able to navigate all kinds of social and political power situations with confidence,” said Ms. Scheppard.
His hobbies are more solitary. The former Bridgewater president is an avid hiker, according to Ms. Scheppard. Also, he spends a lot of time thinking about Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. Stone’s enthusiasm for the 16th president is well known. He reportedly owns more than 500 books on Lincoln, along with assorted memorabilia, and his curriculum vitae lists him as an affiliate of four different Lincoln-related associations. For nearly four decades he has led trips to Lincoln’s family burial plot, not far from the Bridgewater campus, as part of a one-man campaign to remind people of Lincoln’s roots in Virginia.
“Some years we’ve had more than 100 people attend,” he told a local newspaper in 2009. “Other years, when the weather is bad, it is just me and my Saint Bernard.”
Ms. Wheelan said she’s seen photographs of Mr. Stone wearing a stovepipe hat, though The Chronicle could not immediately find any such photos online, despite searching very hard.
Saving a small college from financial collapse is a different task than guiding a country through civil war. Nevertheless, the Sweet Briar job might require something of a Lincoln-like temperament, said Ms. Wheelan.
Mr. Stone has “the kind of personality that brings people in to solve the problem, and that is what I think Sweet Briar needs right now,” she said. “There are a lot of open wounds there, and they need somebody that’s going to mend it.”
Steve Kolowich writes about how colleges are changing, and staying the same, in the digital age. Follow him on Twitter @stevekolowich, or write to him at steve.kolowich@chronicle.com.
