About NMH Northfield

The following is a message to the Northfield campus advisors from Carol Durbin Lebo, director of the Northfield campus initiative. It is an update that may be of interest to all NMH alumni.

Hello Northfield Campus Advisor,

This message comes as a periodic update of Northfield campus activity. The month of February has been lively with a number of visits and presentations. Current activities focus on educational enterprises: secondary boarding schools with a variety of missions as well as institutions for wider ranges of students including religious based enterprises, schools with international and distance learning components, and schools with technology components. To date no offers have been submitted, but several groups have visited multiple times and are close to submitting a proposal. You understand the need for extreme confidentiality and discretion in this process.

The protocol that NMH will follow following proposal submission begins with LandVest and Bidwell Advisors as well as NMH senior administration. They will review the proposal, checking that all information requested in the RFP has been submitted. Following that a subgroup of the Northfield Stewardship Committee will study the proposal and seek relevant outside opinions. When this study is completed the NSC will present the proposal to the board of trustees for a decision.

During the study and after the board accepts the proposal, there will be considerable due diligence done by the board as well as the prospective owner/leaser. Throughout this process attention will constantly be paid to any and all opportunities to communicate with the school’s various constituencies. Again, there will be need for discretion.

You recall that four groups of the advisors were constituted in conjunction with the January 14, 2006 meeting.

The architectural and landscape history project group has been working for nearly a year now. The inventory of the Northfield campus is nearly complete and ready for review. The oral history component will begin in early April, and the Mount Hermon campus inventory later in the spring. As the group looks ahead to publication, a meeting is planned with a current author and information is being gathered from possible publishers. The current fund for this work is at $101,000; more funds will be needed for final publication.

The proposals/marketing group did significant work by e-mail before meeting together on February 5, 2006. They focused their work on two educational initiatives, one a multi-age enterprise for women and the other a plan for technology education. A preliminary report was submitted to Carol Ramsey for the NSC. Review and feed-back are in progress.

The communications group met on February 18, 2006 on campus. Their mandate is to focus on communications to alumni concerning the Northfield campus. Significant discussion and brain-storming helped to create a list of assignments for participants. Following their next meeting there will be a much fuller report.

The funding group has begun to look at the individual projects (conserving the “Ten Virgins” picture from Sage Chapel, creating a memory garden at Mount Hermon, moving the carillon to the new arts center, as possible examples) that will require funding.

The need for a group to look into the formation of alternate, independent entities to mange the campus in a lease or multi-use scenario is emerging. A group will be established for this research within the next few months.

We are planning the next day-long meeting on campus, most probably Saturday, April 1, 2006. Please save this date. Within a few weeks I hope to tell you the date and format for the meeting.

The sun is bright here today, but the temperature low, and the wind brisk. The pace is hurried as students finish papers and exams. Spring break begins Friday afternoon. Exciting times that you surely remember well.

As always, be in touch with your questions and ideas.

Best wishes,
Carol

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