History of Shimer College

[4][5] Crises throughout Shimer's history have included three abandonments of the college by its board in 1855, 1973 and 1977; a catastrophic fire in 1906; bankruptcies in 1974 and 1977; and struggles over governance in 1966 and 2010.

Characteristics that have been noted to recur throughout Shimer's history,[6] include a unique degree of student involvement in administering the school's affairs.

[9] The charter for the seminary was granted by the Illinois General Assembly on June 18, 1852, after lobbying by the citizens of Mount Carroll.

[7] In 1855, fearing that the school would fail due to the lack of subscription revenue, the incorporators sold their shares in the college to the teachers, Wood and Gregory.

This was arranged under favorable terms, with the land donated and the buildings sold at cost, on the condition that Wood and Gregory continue operating the school for at least 10 years.

[7] The music program in this period was overseen by Mrs B.F. Dearborn Hazzen, a voice instructor who became associated with the seminary in the late 1860s.

[16] Facing space constraints in 1866 following the US Civil War, the formerly coeducational seminary limited residential study to women,[7] although some men were still allowed as day students.

[17] Initially this was a partnership between her and Cindarella Gregory, who served as the chief academic officer while Frances oversaw the finances of the school.

[18] For most of her administration, the seminary made no effort to either recruit students or solicit donations, focusing all energy on creating a school that would merit confidence.

[7] In the 1880s, Frances Shimer became concerned about the future viability of the school, and made repeated efforts to secure an endowment.

[6][14] However, the will was successfully contested by the Shimer family,[6] and the resulting reduced endowment was never sufficient to provide meaningful financial support.

[21] On July 1, 1896, Frances Shimer transferred control of the seminary to a 15-member board of trustees, under an affiliation with the University of Chicago.

[18] On February 9, 1906, a fire destroyed much of the campus, including South Hall and all of the buildings that had been part of the Mount Carroll Seminary.

[30] The presidency was assumed in 1954 by a former University of Chicago professor of medicine Francis Joseph Mullin, who began an aggressive fundraising campaign that approximately tripled incoming donations to $150,000 per year.

[15] To address the crisis, Mullin recruited powerful corporate donors including General Motors executive Nelson Dezendorf.

[17] In the early 1960s, Shimer gained national attention from a Time magazine article about the school highlighting its academic reputation.

[8] The article cited a survey by the Harvard Educational Review that ranked Shimer as among eleven small liberal arts colleges in the United States with an "ideal intellectual climate".

[32] At the same time, the administration of Shimer became increasingly isolated from the community, as the president ceased teaching classes[30] and strict conservative social mores continued to be enforced despite cultural changes.

[34][35] Mullin released a statement through a Chicago public relations firm stating that "the recent turmoil instigated by a now former member of the faculty is passing with the receipt of his resignation.

[35] The Board expressed its support for Mullin in its March 1967 meeting, at which registrar James M. Green was present as a representative of the dissidents.

[35] The Board also set up a committee of faculty and trustees to improve communication, and honored a request by the dissidents for increased administrative staff.

[6][21] The adverse publicity the school received as a result of the crisis was compounded by a 1968 article in Look magazine that described Shimer as "the Midwest mecca of the marijuana mystique".

[6] Spira resigned as liquidator in 1974,[38] but financial difficulties continued due to the low enrollment and aging physical plant.

In 1980, the college obtained a major grant from the United States Department of Education, in preparation for which eight new members of the faculty were hired.

[41] In the mid-1990s, the college began an intensive upgrade of the physical plant, made possible by a municipal bond issued through Northern Trust.

[48] In 2005, negotiations began regarding an invitation extended by the Illinois Institute of Technology to move Shimer's operations to the IIT campus in Chicago.

[citation needed] In September 2007, just one year after completing the move he had pushed for, President William Craig Rice left abruptly for a position with the National Endowment for the Humanities.

[56] In January 2010, it was first made public that most of the trustees supporting Lindsay's actions also shared financial ties with Barre Seid, a Chicago industrialist and major donor to the school who had previously been anonymous.

[54][57] In February 2010, despite the unanimous objections of the faculty,[55] strong opposition from the community as a whole,[55][58] and protests by students,[57][59] the Seid-dominated Board of Trustees approved a wholesale rewrite by Lindsay of the school's mission statement.

[54][55] On April 19, 2010, it was reported that the Shimer College Board of Trustees had voted to remove Lindsay from his post as president.