Honeymoon Shaky for New Chapman Chief

As an undergraduate on his way toward a Ph.D., Allen E. Koenig confided his life’s ambition to a trusted professor: to become a college president.

It’s a story that, 30 years later, Koenig tells on himself. He laughs--a ripping hoot that seems to originate from his toes--and says he doesn’t remember making such a statement, but the professor swears that it’s true. And, looking back over his life and career, he allows that it probably is.

Koenig, the Roman Catholic communications scholar who Oct. 1 became president of Chapman College, a mainline Protestant institution, has rarely been deterred by obstacles. He has pursued his goals with single-minded determination and, some would say, arrogance, that has earned him admirers and enemies nationwide.

“It’s the Jesuit philosophy of informed conscience,” Koenig says, recalling his training under the brothers of Loyola High School in his native Los Angeles. “Even if your opinion is at odds with the church or goes against the tide, as long as you are comfortable with it, go forward.”

At Chapman, a shaky honeymoon is still on. Koenig’s style and professed plans to expand the sleepy 2,200-student college have energized as well as unnerved campus veterans. And in the surrounding historic Old Towne community of Orange, where anti-growth sentiments run strong, neighbors watch and wait.

As a candidate for president, the 50-year-old Koenig described himself as direct, driven and sometimes profane. He suggested Chapman evolve into a “medium-sized university” with 3,000 to 4,000 students and a higher national profile. Among his five-year goals, Koenig listed raising admission standards and salaries while cutting extensive course offerings and the percentage of tenured faculty.

His return as president a month later was preceded by a blizzard of negative newspaper articles sent anonymously to Chapman executives and faculty from Boston where, as president of Emerson College, Koenig captained a controversial plan to relocate the campus to suburban Lawrence. Scrawled on some of the stories: “Your loss is our gain.”

Membership in Chapman’s faculty union, which began a resurgence last May, leaped afterKoenig’s selection. And while some professors worried that low-enrollment programs might arbitrarily get the ax under the new president, others predicted that he would bring vigor to Chapman, just as he did during 10 tumultuous years at Emerson.

Meanwhile, Old Towne residents, who called for--and quickly got--a meeting with the new president, still have reservations.

“I’m concerned about his feeling that he needs to expand the college to make it economically viable,” said Joe Suste, a member of the Old Towne Preservation Assn. and owner of a home built in 1909 that is just blocks from Chapman. “For years we heard the reverse: Chapman (College officials) said, ‘We have so many students, we need more space.’ ”

Chapman’s board of trustees was looking for an aggressive leader when it chose Koenig after an 18-month executive search. Clearly, they found one.

Koenig attended the University of Southern California and Stanford University before earning his doctoral degree at Northwestern University at age 25. He taught at universities for three years and finally moved into administration at institutions including USC’s Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (ISOMATA). He became president of Emerson in 1979.

Michael Kittross, the former USC professor to whom Koenig confided his plans to head a college in the late 1950s, offers a unique perspective on his former protege: Koenig hired him as academic vice president at Emerson in 1985, then fired him two years later over personnel disagreements.

“Koenig has a large ego; he is willing to exercise some vision, and he will not automatically take the safe route,” Kittross said. “He is volatile, but not always volatile. I would say, generally speaking, he makes many of the right moves.”

Kittross, who now teaches mass communications at Emerson, still finds Koenig’s early and unwavering ambition remarkable. “He was the only undergraduate I’ve ever known to say he wanted to be a college president. And if you look at his career, you can trace the path.”

Larry Conner, director of performing arts at Emerson, said it doesn’t surprise him that Koenig chose to be a college president at 21--and succeeded. Conner, who became close with Koenig in the mid-1970s, when Koenig was executive director at Idyllwild and he was in charge of drama programs there, describes Koenig as “strong, visionary, controversial and daring.”

“He is driven to be who he is, and that is not always the most political way to go,” Conner said. “That is part of what endears people to him and also (what) upsets or alienates people.”

Emerson psychology professor Peter Corea falls into the latter group.

Corea, an outspoken critic of the planned move from Boston’s Back Bay to the depressed mill town of Lawrence, 30 miles north, repeatedly called on Koenig to resign. Corea also led a no-confidence vote against the president by the Emerson chapter of the American Assn. of University Professors last April.

“Koenig created a lot of wounds here,” Corea said in a recent interview. “He was a dictator and an empire builder. He could not tolerate opposition. He would ruthlessly fire people who disagreed with him.”

But he conceded: “Koenig is a doer. He gets things done.”

Koenig, a man who by all accounts relishes a good fight, is likely to face his first battle at Chapman over the traditionally sensitive issue of expansion.

His dual mandate is enrollment growth and increased quality for the 128-year-old Disciples of Christ college, which currently accepts 87% of all applicants but graduates only 37% of those who start as freshmen. He also will preside over a $23-million plan announced in May to build a new student union, an academic tower and a residence hall on the 38-acre campus.

While Koenig says higher enrollment and increased tuition revenue are critical to balance the budget and end heavy reliance on private fund raising and income from 60 extension campuses, he is considerably more circumspect now than he was during his days as a candidate for the college presidency.

The issue is one that “I want to be very careful about,” he said recently.

There is room for expansion--a long-term development plan approved by the city earlier this year allows 2,500 students on campus at any one time, a formula that would permit the student head count to increase from the current 2,200 to 3,500, according to college administrators. For now, though, Koenig said he has set his sights somewhat lower.

“I want to see Chapman where it doesn’t have to depend financially” on either private donations or the flush extension campuses, he said. That could be accomplished, he said, by raising the enrollment to 2,600 or 2,800 students. Chapman also should begin competing against other county schools for working, part-time students by expanding its now-meager night and weekend class offerings.

Asked whether he still believes that Chapman should become a university, Koenig said: “I am not going to answer that directly.” But, he added, the school already is more “university-like than college-like.”

Unlike a traditional liberal arts college, Chapman has several particularly strong major programs--business, communications, education and psychology. Oberlin College it is not; but neither is it Stanford University. Chapman College also suffers from confusion locally, where it often is mixed up with community colleges, and overseas, where “college” is a term applied to the American equivalent of a high school.

“I’m not in favor of a name change just for the sake of a name change,” Koenig said. However, he said the name confusion, especially abroad, “would certainly be one of the most compelling arguments” for seeking university designation.

The instant prestige conferred by the title “Chapman University” could be achieved by filing a simple form with the state, Koenig said.

Chapman would be required to inform its accrediting organization, the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, of such a change. But the switch would not be considered significant enough to warrant a new inspection visit, Koenig said.

Chapman faculty members are likely to support efforts to increase enrollment, boost admission standards and become a university, according to Paul Frizler, chairman of the Faculty Senate. And while some professors remain apprehensive about the new president, Frizler said enthusiasm for Koenig’s proposed faculty salary boost is universal.

“Instead of cutting, we’re hoping everything can grow,” said Frizler, who is also chairman of the English department at Chapman. “Koenig has suggested bringing salaries up to a level where, in effect, every faculty member would make $20,000 a year more. He’s really impressed people here. There’s not anybody who does not believe he can do it.”

At Chapman--where only 11 people on the payroll earned more than $50,000 in 1988-89--wages are notoriously low.

But Koenig is an apparent exception. Although he declines to comment on his salary package at Chapman, he does not deny reports that he earned an annual $305,000, including bonuses and expense allowances, at Emerson College.

“I have no comment on that at all,” he said. “I had a six-year contract (at Emerson) and I was very well compensated.”

Koenig’s reign at Emerson College brought dramatic growth and prominence to the nation’s only graduate and undergraduate institution devoted solely to communications.

His departure left rancor, shattered plans and uncertainty.

In his inaugural address in 1979, Koenig spoke of finding a unified campus for the college, which was spread among more than a dozen buildings along a 1 1/2-mile strip of Boston. An 84-acre site along the Merrimack River in Lawrence was chosen in 1987, despite fierce opposition from faculty, students and alumni who opposed any move from the vital media and higher education hub of Boston.

The $2.15-million purchase was finally completed Sept. 29, but campus oddsmakers give the plan only a 50% chance of success.

Construction of the Lawrence campus--or any new campus--depends on a rebound in the Boston real estate market, according to Emerson officials. Unless the college gets top dollar for its downtown property holdings, which were once valued at $100 million, it cannot raise the cash to build. If construction does not begin by 1992, the college is required to sell the riverfront property back to Lawrence for $100.

Another ambitious undertaking--one that Koenig touted as an Emerson accomplishment when he was a Chapman presidential candidate in August--collapsed just days after Koenig took the job at Chapman. Koenig announced that Emerson would drop plans to open a law school in suburban Lowell, Mass., because of a new requirement that the college pledge its credit for a five-year building lease. His decision later was affirmed by college trustees.

“Lowell officials significantly changed the conditions of what they had promised us,” Koenig said. “We were faced with a potential liability of $2 million that we were promised we would not have to incur.”

Lowell City Manager James Campbell protested in an interview that Koenig should have known about the lease requirement and said the college pullout has endangered a sorely needed $20-million redevelopment project.

But the sharpest criticism has come from former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas, a Lowell native who had been a close friend of Koenig. Tsongas, now chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Regents, which governs colleges and universities, said in published reports that he felt “betrayed” by Koenig. Repeated efforts to reach Tsongas were unsuccessful.

“I think the action speaks to a total lack of any conscience and an arrogance that is not present in other colleges and universities in the country . . . ,” Tsongas told the Lowell Sun newspaper in an Aug. 31 article. “It is shocking to me. I mean, this is not a cold, heartless, bottom-line corporation.”

Koenig said he is stung by the attacks over the Lowell incident.

“The strategy is very clear,” he said. “ ‘Let’s paint Koenig as the bad guy.’ If I had wanted to take the easy way out, I could have left it for the trustees to decide.”

Although his Emerson tenure ended on a bitter note, Koenig left a very different institution than the one he found.

Under Koenig’s watch, Emerson’s enrollment increased by more than 900, to 2,400 students, SAT scores rose substantially, faculty salaries nearly doubled and new academic programs were launched. “I feel at peace coming to Chapman,” Koenig said. “I leave as my legacy at Emerson a piece of property that, if the real estate market improves, will allow the college to have a new campus in the next five to 10 years.”

Many at Chapman hope he can work the same transformation there.

“Chapman is a college with a pretty serious identity problem,” Koenig said. “The greatest legacy that I could leave would be fundamental growth and academic quality.”