New Carleton College president with a flair for fundraising focuses on making campus more inclusive

Alison Byerly may be the only college president to ever perform a lip-sync of "Hamilton," cannonball into a swimming pool wearing a business suit and challenge a Major League Baseball team manager to a pitch, hit and run contest.

As president of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, Byerly was not afraid to embrace the ridiculous if it helped the private liberal arts school reach its fundraising goals. After eight years at Lafayette, where she raised $425 million and grew the college's financial aid budget significantly, Byerly is bringing her spirited leadership style to Minnesota. She took office as the first female president of Carleton College in Northfield on Aug. 1.

"I think of Carleton first and foremost as a top national liberal arts college rather than just thinking about it as a college in the Midwest," said Byerly, 59, whose daughter is a Carleton alum. "It's a place I've always had enormous respect for."

While Byerly hopes to be a warm fixture in the Carleton community, she also plans to address pressing issues such as supporting students of color who've faced racism on campus and deciding which pandemic-inspired learning changes to keep.

Her immediate goal is to restore the tight-knit community Carleton had before the pandemic forced students and employees to distance themselves from one another. Other than vaccination and indoor masking requirements, life at Carleton should feel somewhat normal this fall, she said.

Most classes and activities will be held in person, sports teams will compete, performers will be on stage and students can dine together instead of taking their meals to their dorms, as they were required to do last year. The college is even planning an in-person inauguration for Byerly.

The return of such traditions is sure to be embraced by the campus community of about 2,000 students.

Students and employees have high expectations for Byerly, especially when it comes to improving diversity, equity and inclusion. After the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd last summer, Carleton began reckoning with discrimination and inequities in its own community.

Black students shared stories of racism and microaggressions and called on Carleton to require anti-racism training and show better support of Black students and faculty. Alumni also weighed in, demanding the school create a long-term racial equity plan.

The school mandated the training and formed a steering group to craft a long-term plan for inclusion, diversity and equity. The group has been meeting since November and will share a draft plan this fall.

Byerly is focused not just on making Carleton a more diverse institution, but on supporting students and employees of color throughout their time on campus. "It really is important to ensure that when we welcome people into the community, they're having the kind of experience that they expect and that they're entitled to," she said.

She sees fundraising as a possible way to bridge the gap. By increasing Carleton's financial aid budget, the college could cover experiences such as study abroad for students who can't afford it. A bigger financial aid budget would also help make Carleton, which costs about $75,000 per year for tuition, room and board, more accessible to more families.

Colleges nationwide, including Carleton, are considering changes in response to COVID-19. Some are permanently increasing the number of online and hybrid classes. A few are creating online and hybrid degree programs.

Byerly has written extensively about the role of technology in higher education. She does not see Carleton replacing in-person classes with distance learning any time soon. Rather, Carleton will likely use remote technologies when students require flexibility and to enhance the classroom experience in ways such as inviting more guest lecturers to speak via Zoom.

"There's always been this thought that technology will replace, when in fact what it does is become additive," Byerly said. "People now read lots of things online but that hasn't completely eliminated books and newspapers."

At Lafayette, she was known to make appearances in classrooms, including a 19th-century British literature course she helped teach. Byerly holds three English degrees, authored two scholarly books and was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Oxford.

Byerly wants to embody the values of Carleton, which thrives on personal connections. "It's one thing to sort of have the [public relations] of here's my résumé and here's why I was appointed," she said. "It's another thing to be known as a person."