Iowa Wesleyan to close after 181 years

Mar. 28—MOUNT PLEASANT — The oldest college west of the Mississippi River is shutting its doors, seemingly for good.

Iowa Wesleyan University, a four-year private liberal arts university, will be closing at the end of the academic year, school officials announced Tuesday. Several financial challenges contributed to a unanimous decision by the university's board of trustees.

It was an ending school officials said wasn't necessarily surprising, but no less crippling. University president Christine Plunkett said the financial headwinds started blowing in the fall.

"We were aware starting at the beginning of the year that this was going to be a particularly tough year for us," she said during doing a media call Tuesday afternoon. "We could see early on the impact of the economy on philanthropic giving, the impact of our expenses going up due to inflation. We could see the impact of enrollment growth, which we still have but slower than previously.

"This is a difficult and painful day for the Iowa Wesleyan community."

The school, which was founded in 1842 and is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, submitted a proposal to Gov. Kim Reynolds in February requesting $12 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding. The governor declined, saying in a statement Tuesday "we endeavor not to spend one-time federal dollars for ongoing expenses." Her statement came on the heels of a third-party analysis of the university's fiscal situation.

The university has $26 million in debt to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which will take over the campus once the doors close May 31. Plunkett didn't dispute the governor's statement, but also was disappointed her office didn't step up to ease a bit of the burden.

"Our financial pressures were not created by the governor, but she did have an opportunity to address them and help alleviate them, and we're sad that did not occur," she said. "Our request was to be able to cover operational expenses for a transitional period as we continue toward a sustainable enrollment number of 1,000 students (IWU current enrolls 878). We were looking at a two- to- three-year period, at which point our projections showed that we expected to reach a sustainable enrollment level."

To foster continued education and for students to complete degrees, the university has secured teach-out agreements with William Penn University, Upper Iowa University, University of Dubuque and Culver-Stockton College, which is located in Canton, Missouri. The agreements will allow students to complete their degrees at a cost similar to Iowa Wesleyan, and those schools must accept all of a student's credits, guarantee admission and meet the same financial package students are currently under.

The teach-out agreements are also valid for online students and graduate students. However, if students do not want to continue their education at a teach-out college, they would need to apply through normal financial aid processes to another school.

A teach-out and transfer fair for students is scheduled for the morning of April 10. Plunkett said the university's employees would be provided 60 days' notice of termination. The school has 110 full-time staff, as well as 78 part-time and adjunct staff.

An official at Cornell College, a four-year liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, said in a statement Tuesday that the school will help provide financial support to IWU students. The school said it will honor IWU's current financial aid awards for students who had planned to enroll this fall. Iowa residents will automatically qualify for $31,000 under Cornell's Iowa Promise Scholarship.

"Iowa is our home and we are committed to helping Iowa students stay in our state and welcoming students from other states and countries as this closure takes place," Cornell Vice President for Enrollment Wendy Beckemeyer said. "We look forward to meeting with students and helping to create a smooth transition to our campus."

The school also said it will honor the current financial aid package for students needing to complete their bachelor degree.

This is not the first time the IWU faced the prospect of closure. In 2018, an 11th-hour donation allowed the school to stay open.

"The amount of funding we needed then was somewhat less, but we did have a community that rallied around us and raised about $1 million," said Plunkett, who was not the president then but was on the executive team at the school. "That was enough to allow us to form partnerships. But even in the last couple of years, the higher ed landscape has changed so dramatically. The number of high school graduates is declining, and the number of that attend college is declining."

Over time, the university has had to make cuts to some programs while creating programs that would directly benefit the region.

The university's board chair, Robert Miller, said the board was "hopeful there would be some relief." It never came.

"The board was committed that we would not start a semester if we didn't have the funds to complete it," he said. "And that's what has forced us to this decision today."

— Chad Drury can be reached at cdrury@ottumwacourier.com, and on Twitter @ChadDrury