James F. Jones

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James F. Jones, Jr., is the 21st president of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Jones is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He and his wife, Jan, have three children and five grandchildren.

Education

James F. Jones, Jr. graduated from Georgia Military Academy (later renamed Woodward Academy) in his hometown of Atlanta. Jones holds Master's and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, a Master's degree from Emory University and a Bachelor of Arts and GDIship from the University of Virginia, from which he graduated cum laude; while at Virginia he was assistant director of the Virginia Glee Club.^[1] He also holds a Certificat from The Sorbonne. Jones has received numerous awards for his community alliances and scholarly and cultural achievements on both sides of the Atlantic, including Chevalier, Ordre des Palmes Académiques by Declaration of the French Government. He maintains positions on numerous boards, with directorships and trusteeships on select educational and cultural committees, currently including the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE), the Centre d'Echanges Internationaux, Paris, and the Rassias Foundation at Dartmouth College.^[2]

Pre-Trinity positions

Before his presidency at Trinity, Jones served as president of Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from 1996 to 2004. From 1991 to 1996, he was Professor and Vice Provost at Southern Methodist University, as well as dean of its Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. From 1975 to 1991, Jones held various academic positions at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, including professor and chair in the department of Romance languages. Earlier, he served as preceptor in the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University, and was chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at Woodward Academy in Atlanta.

Career At Trinity College

James F. Jones, Jr. assumed the role of Trinity’s 21st president on July 1, 2004 after leading Kalamazoo College in Michigan as its president for seven years. Jones announced in May of 2013 that he would be retiring on June 30, 2014.^[3]

Upon taking office, Jones launched a comprehensive, college-wide planning effort that focused on Trinity College’s academic mission and reaffirmed Trinity’s commitment to urban and global engagements. The Cornerstone project established an ongoing process for annual planning in a range of areas and was designed to encourage all members of the campus community to consider new avenues for strategic planning.^[4]

During the past 10 years, Jones has overseen many new programs and infrastructure improvements to the college, including the largest capital campaigns in the college’s history; renovations to the historic Long Walk buildings; the redesign of what is now known as the Gates Quad; the redesign of the Vernon Social student center; and the building of the new Crescent Street town houses. His presidency also saw the creation of the Center for Urban and Global Studies, the launch of a new urban studies major, the creation of the Center for Teaching and Learning, and a partnership with the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy. In 2011, Jones published a white paper entitled, “To Reweave the Helices: Trinity’s DNA by Our Two-Hundredth Birthday,” in which he offered numerous suggestions for transforming the College by its bicentennial in 2023, strengthening its academic rigor and intellectual life, and expanding its social climate.^[5] The outcome of the publication of this paper produced a Charter Committee for Building Social Community at Trinity College, which was charged with examining the recommendations in the white paper and producing a report of recommendations for transforming the social landscape at the college in order to build community and promote intellectual life. The charter committee recommended six key areas for change:

develop a residential house system
strengthen the first-year experience
improve the quality and quantity of social spaces
institute a transparent social code
restore staff positions and program funding cut over the last decade to oversee the house system and social code
reinvigorate the co-education mandate initially approved by the Board of Trustees in 1992 to ensure that all social organizations with access to facilities, and particularly the fraternities and sororities, have gender parity^[6]

To date, ten new pre-orientation programs were added to the fall 2013 first-year experience, and Vernon Social was redesigned and unveiled to the student body in the fall of 2013 as a new hub of social life on campus. The college is scheduled to launch its house system in the fall of 2014. All of these areas are currently being managed by a series of implementation subcommittees, with variable timetables for completion.

Despite his busy schedule, Jones still manages to teach at least one course each year. He is also frequently seen on campus walking his two Irish setters, Atticus and Colleen.^[2]

Criticisms

In 2003, prior to Jones's arrival at Trinity College, Trinity’s U.S. News and World Report ranking was 22nd on the national liberal arts colleges list.^[7] Since his appointment as Trinity's 21st president on July 21, 2004, Trinity College has:

fallen to 36th according to US News ^[8]
fallen to 78th according to Forbes ^[9]
fallen to 196th according to The Washington Monthly ^[10]

In August 2007, as Trinity's rankings began to decline, Jones presided over Trinity joining the Annapolis Group, a nonprofit alliance of independent liberal arts colleges such as Kalamazoo College. Jones was among the signatories of the Presidents Letter, which claims that the U.S. News & World Report rankings are misleading and do not serve well the interest of prospective students in their search for a college or university.^[11]

In 2009, Trinity faced scrutiny for its plan to spend funds which had been specifically donated to endow Trinity College's Shelby Cullom Davis Professorship of American Business and Economic Enterprise and reallocating them to other purposes, in contravention of the specific wishes of the original donor.^[12] In 2013, Professor Gerald Gunderson announced:

“We finally prevailed in the long struggle with Trinity College. They have agreed to the full, legally-mandated income for the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment. Next year we should be up to speed, likely with three, full time faculty. The College was obviously motivated when we filed notice of a lawsuit but President Jones, whose over-sized ego was a big share of the problem, is retiring early in the face of general displeasure. What I would add for the sake of Trinity Alum’s is that my experience shows the very powerful advantage of exact specificity in giving funds. Shelby Cullom Davis demanded a bullet-proof statement as to how the money must be spent. Davis had had bad experiences beforehand and had learned how to insist that an institution remained true to its promises. Jones tried numerous approaches to raiding the endowment but ultimately the legal statement could not be broken." ^[13]

Jones's fundraising efforts elicited a college-record 56% participation in donations from alumni, however the Cornerstone Campaign fell short of its target ^[14] after Jones published a highly controversial White Paper calling for, among other things, the ending of the College's 160-year old fraternity system.^[15] Following the White Paper, Trinity College's Board approved a social policy requiring, among other things, for all sororities to become 50/50 male/female by 2016 or risk having their properties taken by the school and their members expelled.^[16] President Jones then assembled a Charter Committee to study fraternities and sororities at Trinity, which many alumni and students believe:

was deliberately destroying Trinity's sororities by requiring them to go co-ed even though their national charters did not permit them to do so and there was no indication that any men were interested in joining any of the sororities ^[17]
was based on the unscrupulous use of poor statistics and flimsy evidence ^[18]
did not have adequate representation from students and alumni
did not fairly represent sororities
deliberately ignored student opinions ^[19]

Following the White Paper, alumni participation in donations fell 40%, from a high of “nearly 13,000 donors” in 2011,^[20] to 7,445 donors in 2013,^[21] with not one single class of alumni meeting its goal for annual participation, which had been a common accomplishment until 2013.^[22]

In 2013, Trinity College also received a "red light" speech code rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education for clearly and substantially restricting the freedom of speech of its students.^[23] In addition, the Foundation for Student Freedom of Association has contacted Trinity College to notify it believes that Trinity College's proposed social policy:

violates the United States Constitution
violates the Connecticut State Constitution
violates the Trinity College's own Charter
violates Trinity College's Statutes and Standing Rules of the Board of Trustees
violates the Integrity Contract which Trinity College's requires every student to sign ^[24]

Despite the wide unpopularity of Jones's policies, Trinity college has

refused to reconsider the social policies he has implemented
refused to respond to a petition signed by the majority of the 2012 Freshman class at Trinity College denouncing the proposed changes
refused to respond to the more than 4,400 students, parents and alumni who signed a petition condemning the proposed social policy ^[25]

In May 2013, Jones announced that he would retire early from Trinity College. ^[26]

Writings

Jones' publications include Rousseau's Dialogues: An Interpretive Essay, The Story of a Fair Greek of Yesteryear (a translation into English of L'Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne by Antoine-François Prévost), and La Nouvelle Héloïse: Rousseau and Utopia. He has also written dozens of scholarly articles, most of them on the topic of Jean Jacques Rousseau.^[27]

References

External links

Persondata
Name	Jones, James F.
Alternative names
Short description	President of Trinity College, Hartford
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death

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