Transforming the University

by Stuart Vincent

You could see it in the angles and colors of the dazzling New Academic Building. You could feel it radiating from the faces of students featured on new brochures and posters that dared potential students to "find your edge" at Hofstra. You could experience it walking into ivy-covered buildings with newly renovated classrooms featuring new computers and wireless access.

It was a year for rebranding, rebuilding and reinvesting.

Exciting changes were taking place all across the campus, the tangible result of five years of planning and effort by President Stuart Rabinowitz and senior administrators and trustees, planning that had begun to bear fruit in both the physical appearance of the campus and the makeup of Hofstra's student body.

Among the highlights:

• 
  
• The opening of the New Academic Building with its state-ofthe- art black box theater and music rehearsal rooms.
• The launching of a $100 million capital campaign that has resulted in some 17 gifts of $1 million or more.
• The debut of a new branding campaign featuring Hofstra students, vibrant new colors and graphics, and the "find your edge" slogan.
• The transformation of the first floor of the Axinn Library into a more welcoming, comfortable space with brighter lighting, new furniture, increased wireless access and a coffee bar.
• The lifting of the frame of what will become the third pedestrian bridge spanning Hempstead Turnpike.
• 
  

These changes and others were part of a five-year plan put into place by President Stuart Rabinowitz when he assumed the presidency in 2001, and modified and changed over time. By the fifth anniversary of his inauguration, measurable changes had taken place in the look of the campus, Hofstra's financial status, and the makeup of the student body.

Making full use of new technologies was one of the goals of that plan, including increased wireless access on campus, refurbishing older classrooms, a new internal closed-circuit TV system that carries University news throughout the campus, and the remodeled main floor of the Axinn Library.

So, too, were efforts that saw the University's endowment double to $200 million over that five-year period. A $100 million capital campaign launched in 2006 was well on its way to achieving its goal by year's end, with more than $80 million pledged.

For the second time in two years, almost half of the first-year students in 2006 came from out of New York state. Even more impressive was the fact that the average SAT score of the firstyear students on campus last year was 1169, up from 1103 in the fall of 2000.

For the 2005-2006 academic year, the University added new graduate degree programs in education, business, journalism and physician assistant studies, along with a new bachelor's degree program in forensic science, a growing field made popular by the so-called "CSI" effect.

Summing up all these transformations, mirroring this sense of excitement, of moving forward and embracing new technologies and ideas, was Hofstra's new branding campaign. Its bold colors, sense of motion and aggressive "find your edge" slogan are meant to reflect today's Hofstra students. The idea was not for the new branding campaign to change the University's identity, but rather to catch up to it and to promote it to potential students.

All of these changes did not go unnoticed. For the first time in 2006, Hofstra was listed in the Fiske Guide, a college handbook listing more than 300 of the country's "best and most interesting" colleges across the United States.

continued...