The New York Times article is also at http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/080199edlife-winerip-edu.html. The site is free, but you must register.
Copyright New York Times
MAKING THE ASK: John Casteen is a 'Beowulf' scholar,
short-story writer and president of a distinguished university. His
mission: to dun alumns. Welcome to the world of extreme fund-raising.
-- By Michael Winerip
If ever there were a man placed on this earth for the purpose
of being president of the University of Virginia, it is Dr. John Casteen
3d. Born and raised near Portsmouth, Va., he entered the state's elite
public university in 1961 after turning down offers from Harvard and
Princeton, and was immediately smitten by the beauty and grace of this
campus that Thomas Jefferson designed. Dr. Casteen earned a bachelor's
degree with high honors, then a master's and a Ph.D. in English, with a
specialty in "Beowulf." Along the way he learned 12 languages, won a
literary award for a collection of short stories and built a reputation as
a dedicated teacher.
When still in his 20's, he told one of the deans, Ernest Ern,
"I'm going to be president of this university," and to this day, at the age
of 55, when asked to name his heroes, Dr. Casteen ticks off a list
dominated by past University of Virginia presidents. One of his formative
moments as a young man came in the spring of 1970, when he watched the
University of Virginia president at the time, Edgar Shannon -- an English
scholar, a former Harvard professor and a World War II hero -- win over a
crowd of 4,000 angry antiwar protesters gathered at the heart of the campus
on the lawn near the Rotunda.
"For the first time," said Dr. Casteen, "I heard a lengthy, serious debate
about the moral basis of intellectual life and national policy."
In 1990, it was Dr. Casteen's turn. A methodical, driven man with a love
of the classics, he set out to create a blueprint for his university
presidency that was finely balanced and quite traditional. He would spend
three days a week on campus guiding his professors and deans. He would
teach a literature course each semester, to keep in touch with students and
carry on the role of the scholar president. And the remaining time he would
devote to travel, to spread word of the university's good deeds, to partake
in academic associations and to help with fund-raising.
But after three years, the university's board of trustees had no patience
for a traditional president. Dr. Casteen was in trouble with the board. "We
didn't know if he'd be able to continue," says a top university official.
Dr. Casteen wasn't bringing in the bucks! During the recession of the
early 90's, politicians in Richmond had taken a cleaver to Virginia's
higher education budget, in a few years' time reducing annual state funding
to the university from $178 million to $122 million.
By 1993, the University of Virginia -- one of the most respected public
universities in the country -- was receiving just 13 percent of its
operating budget from the state.
By 1993, the board wanted one thing beyond all others from President
Casteen: money. University trustees feared that without a major
fund-raising drive, the school's quality and reputation would suffer.
The board's new marching orders were quite specific: Four out of every
five days Dr. Casteen was to be on the road fund-raising. And no more
teaching; that was a relic of the past. "They wanted me outside selling,"
Dr. Casteen recalls. "They were upset I was spending three days a week on
campus."
As Joshua Darden, a former university board chairman, says: "The
seven-figure donors, they want to see the president, it makes them feel
important. John had to be out there."
What Dr. Casteen has accomplished in the six years since has been
impressive. He has raised $884 million on his way to a goal of $1 billion
by the end of the year 2000, one of the largest fund-raising efforts by a
public university. The drive has endowed 514 new scholarships and 135
professorships, greatly expanded the library collection and raised
salaries, helping the university hold on to its talented faculty.
Such financial strength has played a role in keeping Virginia the
top-rated public university for five years in a row on the influential U.S.
News & World Report college survey. By fattening the endowment to $1.2
billion during this era of shrinking government support, Dr. Casteen has
also helped insulate his university from some of the political whims
emanating from Richmond.
But all this has come at both a professional and a personal cost. He was
criticized last year as an absentee leader in an editorial in the student
newspaper, which nicknamed him Capital Campaigner Casteen. And while Dr.
Casteen is a private man who rarely discusses his personal life even with
those closest to him, friends say the fund-raising roadshow contributed to
the breakup of his second marriage.
If the enduring image of President Shannon was that of a man talking
reason to 4,000 protesters, the enduring image of President Casteen on
campus may well be of a man schmoozing up alumni at the president's
residence; last year he opened Carr's Hill, the president's home, for more
than 150 fund-raising events.
Nor is this considered extreme these days, even for a public university.
In fact, it is rapidly becoming the norm. At one meeting of Dr. Casteen's
cabinet, nobody blinked when he explained what he would be doing in the
next months. "I plan to get pretty deeply into people's pockets," said the
"Beowulf" scholar.
It is remarkable how fund-raising has come to preoccupy top people at even
public universities. This is not something a president is allowed to
delegate anymore. As one Casteen aide, Gordon Burris, says, "We need the
president making the ask." And as another aide, Robert Sweeney, says, "They
want to see the president when it's time for the closer." And in between,
says Dr. Casteen, "you really have to work on cultivation." Otherwise, the
president's time is his own.
In recent years, in the face of lagging state support, several public
universities, including Berkeley, the University of California at Los
Angeles and the University of Michigan, have undertaken billion-dollar
fund-raising drives, according to the latest report from the Council for
Advancement and Support of Education in Washington.
While at first blush this would sound like good news for America's public
universities -- how can you argue with more money? -- free money often has
its price. At the University of Virginia, for example, major donors tend to
be out-of-state businessmen, alumni who have gone off into the larger world
and made their fortune. They complain about the need to have more
out-of-state students accepted to give the university a more global
perspective (the current ratio among the 18,500 students is one-third out
of state, two-thirds in state). And they'd like to see less state
interference, perhaps even ending the university's public status
altogether. "This is an opportunity to wean ourselves off state support,"
Everette Doffermyre, an Atlanta lawyer and donor, said at an alumni
fund-raising gathering in Tucson last year. "This is our chance to get
control of U-Va.'s destiny."
Professors also worry that donors will pressure universities on policy as
well as admission preference for their children.
University officials say such concerns are exaggerated, and the benefits
outweigh the potential conflicts. One reason Dr. Casteen has come to
embrace his fund-raising role was his experience in the 1970's as a
professor at another great public university, the University of California
at Berkeley. There he saw firsthand how the school suffered when its
leadership got locked in funding battles with Gov. Ronald Reagan. "It made
me realize public institutions are fragile," he says, "and the need for
some degree of financial autonomy."
Among presidents, Dr. Casteen is considered a master of the soft sell. He
was guest speaker last year at a meeting of Maryland's 13 public university
presidents, who sat around a horseshoe-shaped table at their headquarters
in Adelphi taking notes on Dr. Casteen's sure-fire fund-raising tips.
"To conceive of fund-raising as making a pitch is missing the point,"
began Dr. Casteen, explaining that the real way to win over alumni is to
get them enmeshed with the university's future. "Money's only one part of
what you need to ask for," he said. "I ask for their vision of the
university, I ask for their political support, I ask for their membership
on committees, I ask for their children."
The president must make the ask, he said, because the president embodies
the university, and "people donate to a person, not a committee." He told
the university presidents how he'd tried to set a tone, including making
his own pledge ($50,000, simply listed alphabetically in the alumni
donation publication); giving up teaching ("If I was going to be on campus
three days a week, I wasn't going to be in Chicago in front of a guy at the
Commodities Exchange"); and using his house for events whenever he's on
campus ("There is a serious relationship between people coming into my
house for a reception before ball games and being a large donor").
He talked about how he used surveys and national rankings to put goals
into focus for donors. "We did some research and discovered we're the
largest university left without a concert hall," he said, a fact he
constantly drops at alumni functions. He personally rewrites fund-raising
letters. ("They have to inspire," said the former short story writer.) And
he spent a half-hour going over his appointment book. ("This man likes to
take a walk around campus -- he wants to walk, we walk. . . . This event,
I'm not the center, I'm there to add a little weight to the party.")
After an hour and a half, the presidents gave him a rousing hand. Dr. Hoke
L. Smith, Towson University president, said that these fund-raising
seminars usually focus on the technical, like the ratio of initial contacts
to closures. "This was spiritual," Dr. Smith said.
And this is precisely how Dr. Casteen landed $1.2 million for a new media
center. In 1996, Dr. Casteen and one of his fund-raisers visited a wealthy
alumnus, Tim Robertson (U-Va. '77, son of the evangelist Pat and president
at the time of the Family Channel cable network). "John always brings
somebody for support," Mr. Robertson says. "It's a lot more pressure when
they bring two or three guys."
Dr. Casteen asked what Mr. Robertson felt the university was lacking, and
the TV executive suggested that the English department needed a media
center to tap into the talent and wealth of the television world. "They
thought that was a great idea," recalls Mr. Robertson. "They said they'd
get back to me. I was amazed at how fast they did." In a few weeks, Dr.
Casteen was visiting again, this time with his arts and sciences dean.
"They had a whole curriculum laid out -- so fast!" says Mr. Robertson.
"John said we'll need x amount to endow a professorship, x to set aside
this floor at the library."
After the deal was clinched, the university announced it -- several times.
"They milked it for all its press value," Mr. Robertson says.
How does a man like Dr. Casteen, with so many intellectual gifts, have the
patience and will to spend so much time on the road begging for money,
alumni dinner after alumni dinner, cocktail party after cocktail party, the
same speeches, the same conversations? A student reporter once asked how he
did it, and Dr. Casteen's answer was fascinating for how little insight it
provided. "To maintain the necessary pace," Dr. Casteen said, "you don't do
anything magic, you keep your head clear, you exercise, you sleep, you
follow rules of moderation." Rather than a peek into Dr. Casteen's psyche,
this was his fitness regimen for ultra-marathon fund-raising.
Indeed, today's university president often resembles the national
television-age politician -- public figures who don't have an internal
world or the ability to convey it, even though they are quite intelligent.
That lack of introspection can be precisely what enables them to operate so
effectively in the public arenas where they dwell.
Dr. Casteen himself was briefly in politics, serving in the 1980's as
state secretary of education to Gov. Charles S. Robb, a Democrat. He is
shrewd politically, which has enabled him to continue as university
president under both Democrat and Republican governors. When he speaks, he
has a way of looking at you and raising an eyebrow, of starting an idea and
not quite finishing it, often seeming to say more than his words while
never really answering that controversial question.
At the same time, as his vice president for development, Mr. Sweeney,
points out, "he can deliver an impressive 40-minute speech on anything with
no notes."
Though he's constantly under pressure, rarely is there a crack in his game
face. "I've seen him at a million tough moments when I know his stomach had
to be churning," says Mr. Ern, the dean, who has worked with Dr. Casteen 30
years, "but John never lets on, that's part of the mystique. He doesn't let
you see inside."
As to what really is going on inside, even those closest to Dr. Casteen
say it's hard to know. "I've never engaged an individual who can talk in
such detail of hiking Dismal Swamp and say so little about himself," says
Mr. Ern, referring to Dr. Casteen's passion for the outdoors. Even Dr.
Casteen's brother Tim says, "I don't know how much I can help, he doesn't
open up much."
Dr. Casteen will not discuss how the demands of fund-raising affected his
marriage or his relationship with his three grown children (nor would he
permit interviews with them). But as one friend says, if you spend 80
percent of your work time on the road and when you are on campus you open
your house for more than 150 fund-raising events a year, there is little
time for a personal life.
"If the spouse doesn't thrive in the fishbowl business," another friend
says, "it's a problem." Dr. Casteen's former wife, Lotta, an English
professor at the university, declined to be interviewed.
To meet John Casteen 3d you would assume he was born to this elite world,
but that is not so. His father and grandfather were shipyard workers in
Portsmouth, and his parents still live in the same house where Dr. Casteen
and his two brothers grew up. To this day, the brothers -- Dennis, a
quality control worker at Norfolk Naval Base, and Tim, a fourth-grade
public schoolteacher -- live on the same block as their mom and dad.
The very things that have led Dr. Casteen to take a different route from
the rest of his family also help make him the perfect fund-raiser for the
University of Virginia. For his own worldly success illustrates the
possibilities that a great public university can open up for a boy or girl
of modest means.
As a senior at Cradock High School in Portsmouth in 1961, he was accepted
to Harvard and Princeton but could not afford either of those private
universities. He chose Virginia after the dean of admissions, Marvin Perry,
made a visit to the Casteen home to recruit this bright student and,
sitting at the kitchen table, showed the family how it could afford the
state school with its lower tuition.
John 3d was the first Casteen to attend college. From the time he entered,
he always worked to help pay his way, in the dining hall, at the library,
unloading trucks at Morton Frozen Foods.
He had trouble adjusting at first, didn't have the sureness of students
from the elite private schools; as a freshman, he struggled to post a B-/C+
average. But during his sophomore year, he developed more confidence that
this was a place he belonged, and he rarely got anything less than A's. From then on, the university felt almost magical. It was there that he met
professors like William Faulkner and John Dos Passos, who turned him toward
literature.
After five years away, as a professor at Berkeley, Dr. Casteen returned to
Charlottesville to be the University of Virginia's dean of admissions from
1975 to 1982. It was during this time that he began to return the favor
that the university had done for him. Under Dr. Casteen, black student
enrollment jumped from 2 percent to 11 percent, the current level. Nor was
this a token effort. The four-year graduation rate of black students at
Virginia -- 84 percent -- has long been the highest of any public
university in the country.
Back in the 1970's, when Dr. Casteen was laying that groundwork, he would
spend his Sundays driving the state, visiting black churches, trying to
convince parents that this university, which had been segregated into the
1960's, would now welcome their sons and daughters, that their children
belonged at the state's elite public college.
Dr. Casteen was doing for those families what Marvin Perry had done for
him two decades before, sitting in the kitchen on Wildwood Road, explaining
that a family could manage to send a child to a great university on a
shipyard worker's salary.
The university has undertaken only one other capital campaign since it was
chartered in 1819. In the early 1980's, it set a goal of $90 million,
raised $137 million in three years and promptly dismantled its development
office, which is how things stood until Dr. Casteen took over. "We could
never let that happen again," Mr. Sweeney says. "We can't afford to lose
momentum."
And so while there is still more than a year left in the current
billion-dollar drive, the Capital Campaigner is already laying the
groundwork for the next one. During the last year, he has been holding
weekend retreats at resorts around the country -- in Tucson, Martha's
Vineyard and Kiawah Island, S.C. -- with small groups of rich,
hand-selected alumni in their 30's and 40's who Dr. Casteen hopes will run
the next campaign.
At the Tucson retreat, held at the Westin Paloma resort, where rooms go
for $350 a night, all costs for the weekend for the dozen alumni and their
spouses were picked up by the university. They flew in from all over the
country, some in private planes, and one, Louis Elson, whose family made
its fortune in airport stores, arrived from London. All were long-term
donors. A few had already given more than $1 million; half had given more
than $100,000.
Dr. Casteen, who makes $360,643 a year, didn't just drop in, make a speech
and leave. He spent the entire weekend, joining the alumni for seminars,
meals, drinks, brainstorming sessions and lectures.
After a Friday-evening cocktail hour on the patio, with the sun setting
behind the desert mountains, the president delivered a speech at dinner on
the decline of state aid to the university. This is why, he said, he was
assembling a group of 100 families "to take the leadership for the next
drive. You are about to take ownership of this thing."
Before saying good night, Dr. Casteen told them, "I'll see you in the
morning. We go to work at the godawful hour of 7:30." And sure enough,
these bankers and venture capitalists, corporate lawyers and computer
software entrepreneurs, were all there at that godawful hour, dressed in
their khakis and polo shirts, shaved, showered and ready for a seminar on
how the university will need to change by 2020.
During the entire weekend, no one asked for money. The word was rarely
spoken. "At U-Va.," said John L. Lewis 4th, an investment manager and
six-figure donor, "gentlemen don't discuss their money or their grades."
"This is about strengthening their bonds to the university," Dr. Casteen
said. "These people understand why they're here."
Indeed, Bert Ellis -- who a few years ago sold his chain of 13 television
stations for $745 million -- had a keen grasp of why. "After I sold my
company I gave a half million to the university and allocated stock, so I
guess that's when I jumped up to this level," he said. "My wife and I can't
spend the money we have. We love this university. Being a giver here is
fun. I'm not anonymous. I want recognition. I want some tickets to the ball
games."
In recent years Virginia's governors, Democrat or Republican, have not
been kind to higher education. During the early 1990's, it was Gov. L.
Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, who cut state aid to the public universities.
And now that Dr. Casteen has overcome those cuts through aggressive
fund-raising, a new governor, James S. Gilmore 3d, a Republican, has formed
a 39-member commission to study whether the state should have more control
over how those private donations are being used.
But if Governor Gilmore thought he was going to make political hay on this
one, he gauged wrong. Editorial writers, business people and student
leaders have blasted him for being hypocritical -- on one hand the state
has cut its support, on the other the state wants control of private money
the university raised to fill the state budget gap. In a vote of confidence
for Dr. Casteen and the other state university presidents, a bipartisan
legislative committee this year asked the Governor and his commission to
"cease and desist." While the commission continued to hold hearings, says
Mr. Darden, the former trustee, "they've been a real snore." Governor
Gilmore is seeing firsthand, free money has its price.
There is nothing like an outside enemy to unite a community; the Governor
and his commission have succeeded in making Dr. Casteen a popular man in
Charlottesville. In an editorial this past school year, the student
newspaper apologized for its earlier criticisms, citing the "tremendous
success of the campaign," and acknowledging that "Casteen's leadership has
even humbled the editorial powers that be of this newspaper."
It is not often that students admit to error -- certainly not in print --
and it must have given Dr. Casteen a great sense of vindication.
"Yeah," he says. There is a pause, he lifts an eyebrow, but says no more.