• The highest total giving in our history! In the year ending June 30, we received $6.3 million, including unrestricted giving right on target in what some say is the second worst recession in 100 years.
• The highest restricted giving in our history! Including a wonderful grant of $1 million from the State of Illinois, and an anonymous gift of $2 million, the restricted giving last year was $5 million! Even without these two, it was still an all-time historic high for the College.
• Highest enrollment in our history! This fall we have 1248 students including 970 traditional students (949FTE) and 280 adult and graduate students.
• Dramatically exceeded the operational budget! Due to careful controls, employee savings, and wonderful giving we finished the year ending June 30 nearly $1 million ahead of budget projections and a significant surplus.
• Retention increase of 9%! Compared to last year we improved our retention of freshmen into their sophomore year by 9%, putting us above the CCCU average and ahead of our strategic goal one year ahead of time.
• Completed the first new general education curriculum in over 20 years! With the launch of the team taught Senior Seminar this fall, our innovative integrative core courses received their “Capstone.” The senior class this entire year is focusing on the real-world issue of “Terrorism.”
• Launched “Greenville in Africa!” With 18 students in Zimbabwe as I write, we have seen a long-time dream for further integrative and character building education come to fruition.
• “Settled an historic old debt!” Through the magnificent sacrifices of our own Board of Trustees, by May we received their written commitments to cover $2.74 million of our internal debt. An annuity in hand is expected to cover the remaining $1 million. This has tangibly transformed morale on campus, shifting our paradigms of thinking from one of scarcity and catch-up, to one of abundance and forward momentum.
• Further improved campus facilities! Taking a breather from three major new buildings in three years, we used a large estate gift to purchase and refurbish the main floor of our new Art Center with its delightful floor plan, large gallery, studios, and classrooms. We then invested another $1 million in remodeling Marston classrooms, completely reconstructing the Tech Center on Hogue Hall first floor, purchasing the Ayers Field Station. We have also undertaken an $800,000+ energy conservation project affecting the entire campus, improved ADA access, added campus landscaping and lighting, and much more.
• Laid groundwork for the future!
  • Our Steps: Besides the marvelous “First Steps” made by the Trustees, our employees have joined the upcoming comprehensive effort by pledging more than $170,000 themselves; well over the goal!
  • Greenville in St. Louis: With surprise gifts from two foundations and two individuals totaling $100,000, we have purchased and are refurbishing the new site of Greenville in St. Louis, the exciting new urban study center set to pilot in January and launch next fall. This project in cooperation with the Free Methodist denomination is the second significant such partnership, adding to our ongoing oversight of the new Free Methodist university in Nairobi Kenya.
  • Future Music Center: By mid-fall we had signed a formal purchase agreement with the local Free Methodist church to acquire their 38,000 square foot facility for our burgeoning music program. With money for this project already “in the bank,” we are pushing forward to cast our vision for Greenville College in the New Millennium.
  • The New Millennium Commission process this year has assessed progress and is making revisions to the four major goals we have been pursuing now these past three years: 1. Sharpen our focus on liberal arts, 2. Develop our historic human resources, 3. Increase traditional age enrollment to 1000, and 4. Assure our fiscal vitality.
  • New Graduate Programs. Most experts in higher education have warned that without new sources of revenue, many small colleges will be threatened. In response, Greenville College is excited to be launching two new masters degrees in education. One designed for current teachers and one for second career teachers, they are both closely tied to our historic mission in preparing teachers who go out to do more than train pupils. Greenville teachers go out to prepare them for lives of character and service too. With Illinois in desperate need of new teachers, we were delighted that our reputation expedited the approval of these new programs in the past few months, to begin operation in late spring. The phones have been ringing!

Greenville College is a special place. Our distinctive calling we believe is to raise up young men and women, transforming them in ways not understood at most institutions of higher education and not attempted even by many other very fine Christian colleges and universities. Our focus on a seamless curriculum and co-curriculum in and out of the classroom, aimed at traditional age students in an intimate residential environment is increasingly rare. Our passion for the character development essential to personal growth and even to good citizenship demands that we stretch our students while nurturing them too! New ventures in Africa and inner city St. Louis testify that we mean business. Likewise it is our conviction that the very best practical preparation for graduates today is not in narrow vocational training but rather in learning to approach the challenges of the work world integratively. Most real world problems you and our graduates will face, defy disciplinary boundaries, force us to consider both the theories of academe and the realities of practical experience, and rarely allow us to forget that our values will make a difference in how we work. So our new graduate programs in education, well-respected regional adult programs, ProTools enhancements in our nationally recognized music program, innovative crossovers in art, music, computer science, media, business, & music, together with emerging plans for invigorated student research in the sciences along with the new off-campus programs already mentioned, demonstrate Greenville’s practical preparation is second to none.

So I hope this gives you a taste of the energy, the momentum, the confidence, and the excitement at Greenville College today. None of us has any illusions that our success is assured or that our own efforts are decisive. This year’s wonderful, yet unexpected gift of $2 million made this point very clear. But “without a vision the people perish!” And “except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” We believe God continues to use Greenville College for His purposes. “He who began a work in us, will see it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.”