Report from the Board of Trustees

 Dear Andover Newton Alumni/ae and Friends,

I am a management consultant who for 20 years has guided nonprofit and educational institutions through transitions and strategic planning processes, so it will be no surprise to anyone that I am a fan of strategic plans. One of many advantages associated with strategic plans is that they inform decision making and provide a rationale for priority setting; they are the roadmap an institution’s leaders consult when navigating new challenges and new opportunities. They anchor an institution in turbulent seas.

Andover Newton developed a strategic plan in 2018 soon after the seminary’s affiliation with YDS changed from “visiting” status to a five-year “Phase II” status. The old school in a new place needed an anchor, and it also needed to assert its still-independent identity by charting its own course, albeit with new partners and within new parameters. While the mission statement is Andover Newton’s North Star, the strategic plan is the map that has been guiding the school to the outcomes its leaders envisioned when, back in 2018, they looked ahead to the year 2022.

When we looked ahead, none of us imagined a 2020 such as the year we have experienced. We did not foresee a global pandemic, nor any of the monumental operational and financial challenges that ensued as a result of it. We did not predict that so much hatred and horrifying ugliness would be laid bare that the nation, including institutions like Yale and Andover Newton, would suddenly be in the throes of a painful reckoning with its racist past and the systemic racism that endures in the present. We did not anticipate being, as one friend of mine said in July, a nation—a people—on the verge of tears; so intense have been the stress, anxiety, sadness, and pain. And in 2018, we did not know or fully appreciate that being embedded at YDS in disruptive, disorienting times such as these, rather than a financially frail and flailing freestanding seminary, would be key to assuring Andover Newton’s ability to survive.

During the past year, as other sections of this annual report illuminate, Andover Newton made impressive, sustainable progress relative to all the goals in its strategic plan; but of necessity we also had to stop dead in our tracks. We have “hit pause” to recalibrate priorities, reallocate resources, redesign programs. In the midst of converging crises and in the face of many unknowns, we must pause to reimagine the future.

A theme for the 2020-21 academic year emerged from an inclusive visioning process led by Dean Sarah Drummond in July: embracing transformation. Embracing change is not easy, but Andover Newton has proven time and again that it has the courage and the capacity to change directions when doing so is in the best interests of programmatic and financial sustainability. To me, embracing transformation means embracing possibility, and this ties right back to Andover Newton’s mission statement: we are, must be, and will remain open to what God is doing now—and calling Andover Newton to do now.

The goals of the current strategic plan are still relevant, and many of the desired outcomes envisioned in the plan continue to inspire the staff and excite the trustees. While we will continue down the path to these outcomes, we must revisit them in today’s context. Now is a time to be as open and innovative as we can be—to ensure that when Andover Newton emerges on the other side of today’s crises, it will be making an even greater difference in the wider world than it has made in the past, and greater than it might have made had its leaders not been handed this opportunity to rethink just about everything except our very mission.

In times like these, institutions need strong, bold, principled leadership. Andover Newton has this. Andover Newton is blessed to have Dean Drummond at the helm, steering this ship through uncharted and choppy waters. She is blessed to have as colleagues her partners at YDS and the dedicated staff and faculty members who really showed us all what they’re made of this past year. She is supported by a board of trustees that believes in her, in Andover Newton’s mission, and in a future of unlimited potential. She and we are grateful for the alumni/ae and friends whose abiding faith and generous support inspire courageous leadership and the pioneering spirit that has distinguished Andover Newton since its founding. All of us are grateful for the student leaders who are challenging us to do even more and better as a model and champion of inclusion, equity, and social justice.

The problems of today represent possibilities for tomorrow. We embrace them, both the problems and the possibilities, with confidence and hope, trusting that the right path forward shall emerge. In Isaiah 43:18-19, God says: Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

May it be so.

With gratitude on behalf of the Board of Trustees,

Linda S. Campanella
Chair