By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton Theological Seminary is considering selling or leasing some of its real estate, including its campus in West Windsor, and shrinking the student body as part of a proposal designed to chart a sustainable fiscal path forward for the 205-year-old school., Those and other issues will be considered by the Seminary’s Board of Trustees next month when they meet. Earlier this year, the board backed studying having one Princeton campus, in a move that also would mean renovating and or replacing buildings on the main campus. The board also wants to see the seminary rely less on its roughly $1 billion endowment to finance annual operations., “The seminary is in the early stages of long-range planning for its campus and facilities and is exploring various possibilities for enriching our residential model of student formation. As our plans become more concrete we will engage neighbors and community partners at the appropriate time,” seminary spokeswoman Beth DeMauro said in a statement. “The goal of our planning processes is to be faithful to our mission, ensuring the seminary’s continued ability to shape current and future generations of servant leaders who will become pastors, chaplains, teachers, missionaries, professionals in the nonprofit or government sectors, and innovators of new forms of ministry in Princeton and across the globe.”, In a message this month to students and others, seminary President M. Craig Barnes outlined what’s being considered. Proposed steps include building apartments for married and single students on the main campus; renovating Hodge and Brown halls; “replacing or renovating the Mackay Center to create a true campus center”; and renovating “Alexander Hall as an intellectual commons, including office space for the entire faculty and some administrative departments.”, Another proposal calls for the seminary to “monetize,” in Barnes’ words, the Charlotte Rachel Wilson campus, home to dorms in West Windsor, and the Witherspoon apartments, in Princeton. He wrote the seminary would keep its “Tennent-Roberts campus, in order to finance other campus improvements” and reduce the amount taken from the endowment for operating expenses., West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh could not be reached for comment Monday., Today, the seminary, home to 562 students, also is considering shrinking “the size of the student body by 30 percent to 40 percent for a period of eight to 10 years,” Barnes wrote., “This proposal will also have implications for the size of our workforce,” he wrote. “We believe that downsizing would be accomplished over the next several years through normal attrition and by reconfiguring jobs to support the mission more faithfully. In other words, extensive layoffs are not part of this plan.”, Barnes wrote the seminary’s trustees want to rely less on the endowment to operate the seminary each year. Money taken from the fund, called the endowment draw, equates to roughly 70 percent of the “operating budget,” he wrote., “Our investment advisors are projecting lower market returns in the coming years that could compromise our long-term financial health if we do not make significant changes now in the amount we spend each year from the endowment’s income,” Barnes wrote., “The board of trustees has set a goal to reduce over several years the rate of the endowment draw from our present level of 4.89 percent to no more than 3.6 percent, which is equivalent to a reduction of $13 million each year from our current annual operating budget of $50 million,” he wrote. “This is a particularly challenging goal since we are already spending one percent of the draw paying for construction debt.”
