Effective July 1, the Elizabethtown College Board of Trustees appointed three new members: Dr. Gerald Baer, Dr. Albert Granger and Robert Sands.
Baer obtained a Bachelor of Science in biology from Etown and then attended the Pennsylvania College of Medicine, where he received his doctorate. He currently works as a Family Practice Specialist with Penn Medicine-Lancaster General Hospital.
Granger graduated from Etown with a degree in biology and has a degree from the Howard University of Dentistry. He is a founding partner and owner of Premier Endodontics of Long Island and in 2007 he received the Dr. Charles S. Farver Apgar and Dr. Bessie D. Apgar Biology Alumni Award due to his outstanding contributions to the success of students. Granger had a tenured term for the Board of Trustees from 2008-2021 and was granted another term.
Sands has a bachelor’s in accounting from Etown and an MBA in finance from Columbia University. He then became the partner and vice chairman of financial services for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and he has been on the Elizabethtown College Leadership Council since 2014 and established his own scholarship.
“We are thrilled to have three new Trustees join our Board with innovative and dynamic professional backgrounds to offer their expertise and talents as we work to effectively govern and leverage the institution,” Elizabethtown College Board of Trustees Chair Michael Spangler said.
While members of the board are excited about the changes happening within the board, some students are not sure what the board accomplishes.
“I don’t really know what the board does–they don’t deal with stuff that interacts with the students directly very often, so I mostly hear about them when something that’ll hit me seven layers of administration later happens,” senior multicultural human services major Judas Foster said.
Although information about the board is available on the College’s websites, students may not seek out that information. The most people hear about the board is typically when the College has a new president.
Sophomore psychology major Percy Lachman was in a similar position when asked what they knew about the board, “I know I’ve heard about it before, but I honestly can’t say I know what the Board of Trustees does–it’s just a title with no context to me.”
Liaison to the Board of Trustees Keri Straub explained a lot of the questions surrounding the board by stating that they “serve as the institution’s governing body and they meet with the President and Senior Leadership Team annually in October, February and April. The Board has final legislative authority in all matters pertaining to the purpose of the College and the policies for fulfilling the statement of purpose.”
Members of the Board of Trustees must be graduates of the College who are invited by the institution due to significantly benefiting it. Many of the members of the board at Etown are former or current presidents or owners of businesses in the area like White Family Dental, Richard D. Poole Inc, Community First Fund and the Riverhorse Group. Therefore, they have experience managing the successes of larger systems.
Since they are graduates of the College and familiar with it, they understand and value the purposes that the College has adopted over the years.
Furthermore, Straub explained that “among the board’s primary functions are selecting the president of the College, developing and sustaining the philosophy and policies of the College, setting the costs of tuition and fees, adopting the annual budget and approving plans for developing and maintaining the physical plant.”
By maintaining the budget, they must balance benefiting the general population of the college and its contributors. The College’s successes may be impacted by where the budget goes for that upcoming academic year.
In general, while it makes sense that students would not be aware of all of the higher-ups, that does not devalue what the Board of Trustees does and what each election they have signifies. The people that have final legislative authority in the decisions being made at the College matter, and who they are influences the choices that are made.
