Gianna Hayes
News Editor
On Thursday, Sept. 25, at 11 a.m., President Anne McCall officially introduced Mark Goodman ’90 to the campus community as the new chair of the board of trustees in a Q&A style meeting in Gault Recital Hall.
An alumnus of the College, Goodman has served on the board since 2016. He mentioned his major in philosophy as “foundational” to his perspective.
In addition to serving on the board of trustees at Wooster, he also serves or has served on several corporate boards, including McDonald’s. He currently serves on the board of trustees at Tufts University. Serving on the board of trustees at Wooster is a volunteer position, as is the case for most places of higher education.
In the first 15 minutes of the event, McCall asked Goodman about his background, values and issues he aimed to counter. “There is a real crisis in higher education right now,” Goodman said, speaking about economic accessibility. “The more students that have access to places like Wooster … the better off society will be. If we don’t work on creating more access to a place like Wooster or other institutions for students from all walks of life, I think and I know society will suffer.”
Goodman also spoke on trends he’s noticed while serving on multiple boards, including the economic strain on institutions. “What it costs to operate places of higher education in our country right now is a challenge … even as they point to places like Harvard, [which], depending on where the market finishes, has a $52-53 billion endowment, only a portion of that endowment is actually fungible to work with,” Goodman explained.
After McCall’s questions concluded, the floor was opened for audience members to ask questions of Goodman.
Paul Seling, associate director of career planning, asked Goodman about specific challenges and strengths that the College currently boasts. Goodman spoke about the advantage of the College’s Independent Study (IS) program, classroom student-to-professor ratios, and the economic challenges facing many families currently.
“I’m on a corporate bank board, and I can tell you one of the concerns we have when we look out across data is [that] over 68% of U.S. consumers only have $500 of savings in the bank,” Goodman said. “Families’ net ability to pay isn’t increasing at the same level of the cost [of tuition].”
Olivia Hankins ’26 asked about Goodman’s stance on divestment, specifically from Israeli companies, fossil fuels and weapons manufacturing. Goodman responded, saying “we have very few … direct holdings in a company. We are invested, like many endowments, in funds, and some of those funds have hundreds of different investments.”
“It’s more easy to divest from something when you have direct holding,” speaking on the investment process and sharing that the selective decisions are left up to the board of trustees investment manager. Goodman was interrupted in the middle of his response by a city-wide power outage. The outage lasted less than five minutes, and once power was restored, the Q&A session resumed.
Kara Morrow, professor of art and art history and chair of museum studies, asked about Goodman’s observations and philosophy on free speech on campus and academic freedom. In his response, Goodman spoke about the Supreme Court decision on Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the court case that ruled that race-based affirmative action decisions are unconstitutional.
“One of the freedoms that has been limited, harpooned, taken away from universities that concerned me the most is the Supreme Court decision from a few years ago that overturned affirmative action,” Goodman said. He also drew on his experience serving on the board of Freedom House, an NGO that promotes democracy and freedom of speech.
“On one hand, people advocated for freedom of speech and criticized college campuses for not having enough access for all sides of perspective — and then that same government and some people that are in leadership now want to go and cancel the Jimmy Kimmel show,” Goodman said. “It’s tremendously important at the core of an academic institution like ours, so that particularly, we’ll serve students, professors can do their scholarly work, research, come up with perspectives, insights. It might be … not what some people want to hear, but perhaps is what we need to know.”
Peter Abramo, director of entrepreneurship, asked next about strategies Goodman hopes to implement to overcome budget and enrollment challenges. Goodman spoke on “bringing in fundraising, adding to our endowment, because we simply have to be able to meet so many families in the middle.”
Fellow board member Robin Harbage ’75 asked about Goodman’s vision and goals. Goodman noted his goals as “getting our financial house in order,” building the endowment back up through investing in new areas and “building a comprehensive capital campaign.”
Paul Xing ’26 asked Goodman about his plans for improving faculty retention. Goodman responded by acknowledging that faculty sometimes get better offers. “We have to do clear all that we can … to maintain as high level retention as possible, while we actually understand [that] we’re in a competitive market and we know we have turnover just like at companies.”
Elys Kettling Law, research & information services librarian, asked Goodman about his priorities regarding accessibility for disabled individuals in different campus buildings.
“[Accessibility] for all is certainly a goal. It’s there,” Goodman responded. “Part of our role at the board level is to make sure that we’re doing the best we can to both … access capital … [and bring in] donations and things to make those things possible, because we know all these things require investment and cost.”
The Voice asked Goodman how he intended to support historically marginalized students, particularly following the end of the College’s partnership with the Posse Foundation, which was announced this summer by McCall in an email to the campus community. Goodman again brought up affirmative action.
“One of our channels and opportunities is both to make sure we are compliant with federal laws and we don’t incur risk for the College that could have us in jeopardy in that regard,” Goodman said. “I’ll say this on behalf of the board, we’re not going to, certainly, allow a Supreme Court decision to stand in the way … [of] our mission. The best of who we are is having an inclusive campus.”
The Q&A session ended with a question from McCall, asking about his hopes for the College five years from now. Goodman ended on the importance of being leaders in what he dubbed RI — real intelligence. “You don’t have AI without RI. We’re a place looked at for capital ‘R’ capital ‘I’ real intelligence.”
