TCNJ president Gitenstein stepping down; led school's turnaround

The College of New Jersey's first female president, R. Barbara Gitenstein, will step down at the end of the coming academic year, ending a 19½-year term in which the college focused more and more on its top-tier undergraduate students while being buffeted by the waves of change flooding higher education.

Gitenstein, 69, announced her decision Tuesday night at a meeting of the Ewing, Mercer County, school's trustees. On Wednesday, she described the decision as bittersweet — "mostly sweet."

"I love the college, and I've loved being president. But it's time," she said in an interview.

She joked that she was leaving, unlike some college presidents, without being in trouble with her trustees — or the law. And, she said, "I also want to be able to leave when people didn't want me to leave."

Gitenstein will work part-time as a consultant in Washington after she leaves next spring. She said she hopes to spend more time with her family, including her children and grandchildren, and will move with her husband to their apartment in New York City.

"I will be 70 when I retire," she said. "I still have a lot of energy left, and I want to do things."

Gitenstein leaves the college on sound footing, after a decades-long process she and others call the Transformation, a large-scale restructuring of the curriculum and student experience to emphasize depth of learning.

From 1999, when Gitenstein began, to 2016, enrollment has grown 9 percent, to 7,396 students. Within that, full-time undergraduate enrollment specifically has increased 17.3 percent, to 6,496.

The faculty has grown as well, increasing 6 percent to 355 professors; two-thirds of current faculty members have been hired by Gitenstein.

The endowment was about $6.6 million in 1999, adjusted for inflation; it is $45 million today, with an additional $8.5 million in pledged money. The major portion of that, about $46 million, came from the college's first-ever comprehensive fund-raising campaign, which ended June 30.

"She ought to be celebrated for what she's done there; it's truly remarkable," said George A. Pruitt, president of nearby Thomas Edison State University and a close friend.

Gitenstein's achievements are especially remarkable given the environment around her, Pruitt and others said: state funding that has declined amid rising costs, a deep recession, and continuing questions about the value of higher education.

TCNJ has had its own problems.

When Gitenstein joined in January 1999, she was immediately met with a letter from faculty that named several "big issues" at the school, including a lack of shared understanding of institutional mission and a top-down decision-making process in which faculty did not feel included.

"It's fair to say that there was not a focus on the academic side of the house, and I think there had developed a lack of trust and respect between the faculty and the administration," said Michael Robertson, an English professor who joined TCNJ in 1993, when it was still Trenton State College, and was president of the faculty senate from 2004 through 2009.

Gitenstein responded to the letter with a task force to review the college's governance, ultimately restructuring the administration and giving more power to faculty, staff, and even students. Search committees — for new deans, say — began to include not only faculty but also students and staff, sometimes a trustee as well.

"I genuinely believe that you come up with better decisions if you listen to people," Gitenstein said, and Jorge Caballero, the chair of the trustees, agreed, describing her as "very inclusive, very collaborative."

As part of the academic restructuring, students shifted to taking four classes every semester, instead of five. The courses became longer and bigger — emphasizing depth over breadth, Robertson said.

"We really focused on improving quality in ways that would enable us to compete with the best privates while also serving a public mission," said Stephen R. Briggs, who was hired as provost by Gitenstein months after her arrival and who left in July 2006 to become president at Berry College in Georgia.

Gitenstein sees her school as winning. This coming year, more freshmen and transfer students are coming in than expected, a sign of strong demand. Within hours of her retirement announcement, nervous faculty began to worry about what happens next, said John Krimmel, a criminology professor at TCNJ since 1993 and president of the faculty union.

Gitenstein has had a positive relationship with the union, Krimmel said, even when it cost money she did not immediately have to spend. Recently, as faculty around the state worked without a contract, schools did not have to fund professional development; Gitenstein set aside money for it anyway, Krimmel said.

Asked about Gitenstein's leadership style, Briggs, her former provost, recalled her response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"When she heard the news, her first instinct was, 'Let's walk around the campus and be visible to students and be with students,' " Briggs said.

Gitenstein and Briggs walked from dorm to dorm, he said, and all around campus. Students, many from New York and North Jersey, huddled together to watch the news, to cry.

"Her instinct is to be visible, to be available," Briggs said. "Her sense is, when something difficult happens, people look for leadership. And therefore you need to step to the front and you need to be honest and open and human."