ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 7, 1995 TAG: 9512070045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
A DAY AFTER the surprise announcement that Jane Margaret O'Brien would be leaving the Hollins College presidency next year, she sat down to talk about her decision and the college that lured her away.
Jane Margaret O'Brien could not afford the liberal-arts education she wanted.
So she struck a deal with her father: If he would pay the equivalent of public university tuition, she would cover the rest.
O'Brien enrolled at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Those years were difficult, financially, she said.
She graduated in 1975 with a degree in biochemistry, later earning a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Delaware. She joined the faculty of Middlebury College in Vermont in 1980. She was dean of the faculty when she left Middlebury in 1991 to become president of Hollins College in Roanoke.
O'Brien knows the value of a quality liberal-arts education. So when she was offered an opportunity to have a major role in a unique concept that provides a quality, but affordable, liberal-arts education to students of modest means, she could not pass it up.
A bonus? That the opportunity was about two hours from her native Annapolis, Md.
O'Brien on Tuesday was named president of St. Mary's College of Maryland. She will leave Hollins, where she is widely known as simply "Maggie," at the end of the 1995-96 academic year.
The state took pride in bringing home one of its own. O'Brien's appointment - carried in The Washington Post and The (Baltimore) Sun on Wednesday - was announced by Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, who gushed over welcoming home a Maryland native.
The state has made an effort to boost the profile of St. Mary's, now considered a jewel of academic excellence. The college is in St. Mary's City, Maryland's first capital. Its board of trustees includes former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and Paul Nitze, chief arms negotiator under former President Reagan.
Since breaking away from the University of Maryland system in 1988 - maintaining state support but setting its own tuition and budget - the college has been designated a "public honors" college by the state legislature.
After a news conference Wednesday at Hollins, O'Brien said she had great emotional attachment to the public honors concept because of her own financial struggle to obtain a strong liberal-arts education. A public honors college has been defined as a public institution that provides the same quality of education as many top-notch private institutions but at a much lower cost.
There are only two public honors colleges in the country - St. Mary's and New College in Sarasota, Fla. Eleven states, including Virginia, have approached St. Mary's to inquire about the concept, O'Brien said.
One-third of the students at St. Mary's are the first in their families to attend college. About 11 percent are black. And there is a "good bit of age diversity," she said. "Reflecting the public was in the forefront of [the administrators'] thoughts."
O'Brien had attempted to bring more diversity to Hollins. She and her staff traveled nationwide and overseas to recruit a more diverse group of students
Recruitment has been not only an effort to diversify Hollins' student body but a matter of survival, as well. Hollins, like other private colleges, has had to struggle in an increasingly competitive market.
Hollins now devotes 25 percent of its operating budget to financial aid - $4 million - up from 7 percent when O'Brien arrived on campus.
Public institutions "are offering comparable learning environments, residential environments, co-curriculum," she said. "But that's where Hollins has succeeded. We've outpaced our competition."
Freshman enrollment this academic year was up. The students' SAT scores were 50 points higher than those of previous freshman classes. And the class is Hollins' most academically talented group of incoming freshmen in 20 years, O'Brien said.
Though some Hollins faculty members have expressed concern about the college's financial health, O'Brien maintains that the college is on sound footing. The Hollins endowment has grown from $35 million to $61 million since 1991, she said.
O'Brien said 90 percent of her "blueprint" for success has been accomplished. Last month, the college launched a capital campaign, with $32 million of a $41 million goal already raised. Renovations have been completed on one dormitory and are about to begin on an academic building. Plans for an $11 million library have been unveiled.
O'Brien said she would "love to get the other 10 percent done," although time may not allow. She is scheduled to leave Hollins on June 30, the day her five-year contract expires.
O'Brien said she, her husband, Jim Grube, and their two sons will miss the big city/small town blend of the Roanoke Valley.
St. Mary's College
Location: St. Mary's, Md.
Enrollment: 1,500
Status: State-supported
Founded: 1840.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: MIKE HEFFNER/Staff. President Jane Margaret O'Brien saysby CNB90 percent of her "blueprint" for Hollins' success has been
accomplished. color. Graphic: Map by staff: St. Mary's College.