Buck and Joni Smith’s ‘Can Do’ Attitude Credited With Fiscal Rescue : Chapman College Learns Its Lesson

As Joni and Buck Smith lay in bed one night about eight years ago, telling each other what they had done that day, Joni heard some disturbing news.

“This was back (in Wooster, Ohio) when Buck was advising Chapman (College) on how to handle its financial difficulties,” Joni said. “Buck had completed his study on what Chapman should do, and he told me that he had just thrown out all the Chapman financial studies. Buck told me, ‘The job’s finished.’

“I didn’t say anything right away,” recalled Joni Smith, but for some inexplicable reason, she said, she had a “very unsettled feeling about Buck throwing out everything on Chapman.”

Although it was nearly midnight, she reluctantly expressed her misgivings and suggested that her husband retrieve the discarded Chapman materials.

“So Buck gets up, puts on his bathrobe, gets a flashlight and a cardboard box and goes out to the trash can and goes through the garbage, looking for the Chapman stuff. Buck did look kind of funny out their poking through the garbage, but I felt better when he finally came back with the Chapman folders.”

Prophetic Premonition

Four months later, Joni Smith’s premonition proved prophetic when G. T. (Buck) Smith was named president of Chapman College, the largest private four-year institution in Orange County. Since then, by virtually all accounts, the Smiths have become the most appreciated couple ever to head the century-old institution in Orange, with its lush green campus dotted with Neo-classical buildings.

“We didn’t even know he was being considered for the post,” Joni Smith recalled. Eight years later, she is still as amazed as her husband at the turn of events.

“We learned later that when I’d come out to California (from Ohio) with Buck, when he’d have to talk to Chapman’s trustees, they were watching Buck and me to see how well we worked together,” said Joni.

Buck Smith added, “The trustees wanted a couple with a ‘can do’ attitude--and who were outgoing.”

A candidate’s spouse has always been a factor in the choice of a college president, but with the expanding role of the spouse in recent years, they have come under unprecedented scrutiny, according to the Smiths, who are active in several state and national higher education organizations.

“I think college trustees are more conscious now of spouses for two very different reasons,” said 49-year-old Buck Smith, who is a director of the national Council of Independent Colleges. “On one hand, the board of trustees may decide that it wants the president and his wife to play a traditional role--and get two for the price of one.

“On the other hand, the trustees may not want a couple that will play this role,” he continued. Buck Smith regularly conducts seminars for trustees, presidents and other administrators on how to run their institutions better.

“The trustees may not want the couple to be totally engaged in the life of the college, they may not care what the spouse does with his or her time.

“In any event, this new scrutiny of the spouse forces the college to decide what kind of institution it wants to be. College trustees can no longer ignore spouses and assume that a spouse automatically will fit their preconceived notions of how he or she should behave.”

Indeed, the growing duties of spouses of college presidents, according to Joni Smith, has prompted “quite a bit of dialogue in higher education on whether a college president’s spouse--and it’s still usually the wife--should be paid. My own feeling is that I’m paid many times over by the relationships I’ve developed both on and off campus.

“I don’t want any type of monetary restitution. Of course, there are wives who take the other side on this question.”

Since the Smiths arrived at Chapman in August, 1977, they’ve brought the liberal arts college back from the precipice of psychological and financial bankruptcy, according to George Argyros, wealthy businessman and Chapman alumnus, who has been a trustee since 1973 and chairman of the college board of trustees since 1976. This feat was accomplished by Buck and Joni Smith working together, he said.

“While only one of us is officially on the payroll,” Buck Smith said, “I consider this job a partnership--a joint venture between Joni and me.”

Smith became president of Chapman as it was facing perhaps the greatest financial crisis in its history. Two years earlier, it had had an outstanding debt of more than $4 million and couldn’t pay its taxes, recalled Argyros.

To keep its doors open, Chapman was forced to dock its once glorious--but costly--World Campus Afloat program, an ocean liner that twice a year carried professors and their students around the world.

The college laid off more than 5% of its employees and imposed a 10% pay cut on the rest. The morale of faculty and students plummeted. At the same time, the college was suffering from declining enrollment and a lack of leadership, Chapman’s supporters say.

Despite the budget tightening, Chapman’s financial picture improved only marginally until Smith, then vice president for development at the College of Wooster and a sought-after consultant to financially troubled colleges, was hired in 1976 to advise Chapman on its money problems.

Since Smith became president in 1977, the college’s debt has been wiped out and the net worth of the institution has jumped to $23 million from under $7 million.

Equally remarkable, $37 million has already been contributed or pledged toward the $54-million goal of the Enterprise ’86 fund drive. The fund-raising effort is to culminate next year, coinciding with the 125th anniversary of the college. (The school is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and moved from Los Angeles to Orange in 1954.)

Chapman admissions applications have also tripled since 1977, and Smith said enrollment has jumped 50%, to a record 1,800 undergraduate and graduate students. About 60% of the students are from Orange County, according to Smith, and 13% are from foreign countries.

“True, Chapman College has had it’s dark moments in the past,” said Smith. “But the resiliency and spirit of the people here completely overshadowed the college’s financial problems.”

Smith, an alumnus of the College of Wooster and Cornell University, began his career in higher education at Cornell in 1960. He returned to Wooster in 1962, and handled fund-raising there as a vice president.

When he arrived at Chapman, he recalled, he soon realized that “the spirit of the place needed to be captured in certain values and principles that would guide the thinking, actions and programs of the campus community.

“I have this almost total obsession with quality--with doing things well. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Otherwise, don’t spend your energy and resources on it.

“In Chapman’s case, I thought we could pursue excellence only if we showed concern for how we treated each other on campus, how courses were taught, how the campus grounds were maintained, how the meals were served--and even how the letters were typed.”

This was in keeping with what Smith calls his “definition of management: Management is a matter of caring passionately about something and seeing that it gets done right.”

In the beginning, the Smiths gave much thought to making clear to themselves and the college community why Chapman should continue to exist. Days after his arrival from Ohio, the new president called a general meeting of everyone on campus that summer day.

“We phoned ahead, and asked the college chaplain if he would meet with Joni and me before the meeting for meditation,” Smith said. “For 15 minutes, we asked God’s strength and guidance for the task we were about to undertake.”

At the meeting, 200 students, professors, groundskeepers, secretaries, security guards, maintenance men and others got acquainted with the Smiths and talked about Chapman’s future, which, to many of those present, seemed dim.

Smith reminded them that a formal convocation opening the academic year would be held in a month, and he wanted the campus community to “arrive at a single statement of purpose for Chapman by that time. I invited everybody there to send me their suggestions, and I sent out letters requesting input from those who were not at the meeting.

“I was overwhelmed by the response. I still have the file; it’s 10 inches thick. Everybody seemed to have something to say. The college mail room staff drew up a statement, and they all signed it. Even the most senior professors sent in their suggestions.

“From all this, we came up with a one-sentence, 20-word statement of purpose: ‘The goal of Chapman College is to provide liberal and professional learning of distinction within a caring and value-centered community.’ ”

A Feeling of Belonging

The Smiths took immediate steps to back up those words with deeds. “In Southern California we have all these casual visitors and all these freeways--and their on- and off-ramps--with lots of people going in different directions,” Buck Smith said. “Sometimes, it seems like nobody has any roots. To counteract this, at Chapman we have tried to create a community where people very much feel they belong. This is a place where tradition matters a great deal; that’s why we feel that Chapman is so extraordinary for Southern California.”

The Smiths met as students at Wooster and have been married nearly 29 years. They have a son, Paul, 26, and a 22-year-old daughter, Sherry. Joni Smith says the high visibility--and accessibility--she and her husband maintain has helped create a family-type atmosphere at Chapman. Both give time and personal attention to the campus community. For example, at her request, the student health center informs Joni Smith whenever any student, professor or staffer has a serious medical problem, so that she can visit.

“I thought this would be at a natural way of showing our concern for people as people ,” recalls Joni Smith.

“When you visit people who’re laid out on their backs, a relationship develops that’s very solid.”

This concern for the students is year-round, said her husband, who recalled: “Last summer, one of our students was suffering from cancer. While we were away on vacation, Joni was on the phone to the hospital room every other day. This close friendship Joni had with this student has been multiplied scores of times. In fact, our number is in the phone book, and people can call us at any hour.

“And one or the other of us tries to go to at least one student event every day,” Buck Smith continued. “Sometimes it’s three events in one day; sometimes it’s none. But we try to involve ourselves as much in student life as possible, to offer our support and encouragement. Gradually, Joni has taken on more of this responsibility.”

Improving the quality of life at Chapman takes money, and Buck Smith has been phenomenally successful in this area. He credits his nationally recognized fund-raising abilities in large part to the fact that he takes a “different view” from that of many college presidents who say raising money is the most distasteful part of their job.

“I don’t see myself as raising money; I’m making friends,” said Smith. “In fund raising, 95% of it is psychological or spiritual. Only 5% of it is financial. Actually, I don’t ask for money. It’s the other way around. People come to me and ask what they can do to help.

“The thing to bear in mind is that people don’t give to institutions. People invest in ideas and people.”

And Smith loses no opportunity to let potential contributors know Chapman’s ideas and people are worth investing in.

“We’re out practically every night,” Joni Smith says with relish. “I truly enjoy people, and Buck’s position gives me an opportunity to meet lots of really wonderful people. Sometimes you feel a little tired, but once you’re among these people, you forget your bones are tired or you’re weary.”

Buck Smith conceded, “We’ll go three weeks without having dinner at home (in Villa Park). But we enjoy this kind of schedule, because what could be more enjoyable than meeting people who are well read, and who genuinely are interested in young people and higher education--and want to make a difference. I find this extremely challenging and thrilling. Besides, I have an obligation to do this, because as Chapman’s president, I’m doing that which nobody else can do for the institution.

“If (other college presidents) find greater pleasure in chairing committee meetings and immersing themselves in the routine matters of college administration, that’s fine with me. As for myself, I delegate these matters to others. Why have good administrators if you don’t use them?”

Buck Smith sees his association with Chapman as in three phases: the 1976-1979 Recovery Period, the 1980-1983 Positioning Period and the current Achievement Period.

“I spent the ‘Recovery’ period clarifying Chapman’s mission, balancing the budget, rebuilding the endowment and establishing clear expectations for the institution and the people who work here,” Smith said.

In the “Positioning” phase, Smith laid the groundwork for the Enterprise ’86 fund drive. “When it was announced (in November, 1981), it was the largest undertaking of its kind by a college of our size,” he said.

The fund-raising effort went hand in hand with enhancing the quality of education at Chapman, Smith said. He said improvements could be made only by increasing the college’s financial strength and setting new standards for the faculty.

“I’ve made it clear to the faculty,” Smith said, “that four things are expected of them: that they be first-rate teachers, that they engage in serious scholarship, that they become closely identified with individual students by serving as advisers or through other means, and that they become actively engaged in faculty activities and other campus affairs.”

He emphasized that he alone is not responsible for the rejuvenated Chapman, however.

“I have a strong board of trustees and faculty who’ve taken active leadership roles. And of course, I had a strong management team of administrators.

“It takes long hours to run this place, and it can only be done right by fully utilizing the resources and skills of others. They are the people that make Chapman a success--that make Joni and me a success.”

During the current Achievement Period, Smith has been adding programs to Chapman’s curriculum. This includes expansion of Enterprise Institute, founded in 1982 to promote public awareness and appreciation of the free-enterprise system.

Smith also is seeking to increase the number of endowed professorships and to augment student scholarship funds. He has embarked on a campaign to beautify the campus and plans to break ground soon for a a $7-million Learning Center.

Chapman College attracted national attention in 1983, when Buck Smith and some influential supporters of the school persuaded Richard M. Nixon to choose the Enterprise Institute as the academic affiliation for his presidential library in San Clemente. Chapman had been a dark horse in seeking the association and was chosen over UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and a few other well-known Southern California schools.

As for the couple’s future, Buck Smith says, “Joni and I were at Wooster for 15 years. We did not come here as a steppingstone to someplace else. To be sure, I have no long-term contract. In fact, I don’t have a contract at all.

“But we intend to stay as long as Joni and I, along with the Chapman College community, feel that we make a meaningful contribution to the college.”