Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

From Accreditation to Validation: CIC’s First Half-Century
enrollments, expand their campus facilities, add books to
their libraries, and improve the scholarly credentials of
their professors, and all of these improvements required
more operating funds and larger endowments. “Operation
Bootstrap” proposed to aid them in all these endeavors
by helping them strengthen their academic programs,
deploying consultants to advise colleges on fundraising and
fiscal management, and raising money directly for member
institutions.
CASC’s programs were governed by groups of
college presidents and other officers, first separated into three
commissions—one concentrating on accreditation status and
the members’ financial means; a second on the effectiveness
of the institutions’ educational programs; and a third devoted
to educational research and experimentation. After a try
at regional governance, the organizational structure was
simplified with the members of a national board serving on
three subcommittees responsible for Council operations,
programs, and membership.
Hill left the CASC executive directorship in January
1968 after seeing the Council through its infancy, raising
nearly $1.5 million in corporate and foundation donations,
and, in his words, breaking the “vicious circle.” His successor
was Richard P. Saunders, who had been president of the
Institute for Human Resources Development and of Future
for Children, Inc. Saunders served for only eight months,
owing to conflicts with the board, and was succeeded by
Roger J. Voskuyl, president of Westmont College and a
longtime member of the CASC board. Voskuyl led the
Council until 1974, moving the offices in 1969 to the
National Center for Higher Education at One Dupont
Circle in Washington, DC. When he retired, the Council
hired Gary H. Quehl, a college administrator who had
been executive director of the College Center of the Finger
Lakes. In 1986, Quehl left CASC to become president of the
Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. He
was succeeded by vice president Allen P. Splete, who had been
president of Westminster College in Pennsylvania and a vice
1970
CASC hosts the first Presidents
Management Institute.
1972
Institutional Research and
Planning Project is launched to
help colleges set up offices of
institutional research. CASC tops
100 members for the first time.
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