Spring 2002 - Haverford College

New Beginnings
Welcome. The redesigned magazine you are holding in your
hands (or viewing on the Web) is a visible, tangible result of a
yearlong conversation about Haverford – its strengths, its values,
its essence and ethos.
That conversation was started late last summer, when the
Institutional Advancement department asked Norman Pearlstine ’64,
chair of the newly formed Virtual Communications Committee,
to help schedule a series of national alumni focus groups. Led
by President Tom Tritton and Vice President for Institutional
Advancement Jill Sherman, we traveled across the country to hold
informal discussions about Haverford College. Similar meetings
were held on campus with faculty, administrators, and students.
As you might expect, some dominant themes emerged from the
focus groups. Whether we were in San Francisco, or Chicago, or
Boston, or New York, common ideas about Haverford quickly
crystallized. Academic excellence. Honor Code. Quaker values.
Sense of community. A beautiful campus.
A comprehensive attitudinal survey was sent out in October.
We had a 28 percent response rate – extraordinary for a long and
involved survey instrument. (I’d like to personally thank each one
of you who took the time to fill out a survey for us.) The results
of that survey, which fit very well with the themes emerging from
the focus groups, were presented to the Board’s Advancement
Committee in February. If you’d like to see more about the survey,
please drop me a note and I’ll send you more information.
What does all of this mean? In the everyday workings of the
Marketing & Communications office, we hope to have a better idea
of where our publications, our website, and other outreach efforts
need to go. We hope to have a better idea of what to look for when
we try to capture Haverford and deliver it to you in the pages of a
magazine or in a brochure.
When we set out to improve the design of the alumni magazine,
we had conversations on campus with alumni, faculty, staff, students,
and administrators; a panel of faculty and administrators interviewed
graphic-design candidates in December. Preliminary magazine
designs were reviewed by the Virtual Communications Committee,
whose members are alumni volunteers working in publishing,
advertising, marketing, and communications. At the end of that
process, we hired Acquire LLC, a design firm in Ardmore whose
crisp, clean work you see here.
We hope you like what you see in these pages. Of course,
change is not always met with open arms. We’d like to hear
from you just the same.
S T A F F
Jill Sherman
Vice President for
Institutional Advancement
Stephen Heacock
Editor, Executive Director of
Marketing & Communications
Tom Ferguson
Production Manager,
Class News Editor
Brenna McBride
Staff Writer
Hilary O'Sullivan
Office Manager
Acquire, LLC
Graphic Designer
Contributing Writers
Chris Kent ’74
Romina Levy
Howard Lutnick ’83
Maya Severns ’04
Erin Tremblay ’04
Virtual Communications
Committee
Norman Pearlstine ’64, Chairman
Editorial Advisory
Committee
Violet Brown
Emily Davis ’99
J. David Dawson
Delsie Phillips
Jennifer Punt
Willie Williams
Stephen Heacock
Executive Director of Marketing & Communications
Haverford College Marketing
and Communications Office
370 Lancaster Avenue
Haverford, PA 19041
(610) 896-1333
©2002 Haverford College