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An excerpt from Time Masters, one of René Laloux masterpieces of animation.
The savage-like sensuality, the dreamlike suspension of reality emanating from this scene is breath-taking...
I don't know exactly who composed this music. It may be Jean-Pierre Bourtayre, Pierre Tardy or Christian Zanesi, as they were three to collaborate on this reel. If anyone knows, I welcome any clarifying explanation...
Senso is a 1954 melodrama film, an adaptation of Camillo Boito's Italian novella Senso by the Italian director Luchino Visconti, with Alida Valli as Livia Serpieri and Farley Granger as Lieutenant Franz Mahler. Originally, Visconti had hoped to cast Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando in the lead roles, but Bergman was not interested in the part, and Brando was nixed by the producers who considered Granger a bigger star, at the time. Both Franco Zeffirelli and Francesco Rosi, later accomplished film and theater directors in their own right, worked as Visconti's assistants on the picture. Starring: Alida Valli, Farley Granger, Heinz Moog, Massimo Girotti, Rina Morelli, Christian Marquand, Marcella Mariani.
Creators and Owners are: Marvel,Richard Fleischer, Christian Ferry, Clive Exton, George Macdonald Fraser and everyone else who took part in the production of this film.
(1950) In 1640 France, Cyrano (José Ferrer), the charismatic swordsman-poet with the absurd nose, hopelessly loves the beauteous Roxane (Mala Powers); she, in turn, confesses to Cyrano her love for the handsome but tongue-tied Christian (William Prince). José Ferrer, Mala Powers, William Prince, Morris Carnovsky, Ralph Clanton, Lloyd Corrigan, Virginia Farmer, Edgar Barrier, Elena Verdugo, Albert Cavens, Director: Michael Gordon.
You know, thinking about faculty and staff at small Christian colleges and universities is a very interesting topic. Successful schools with entrepreneurial leaders tend to create an atmosphere where faculty and staff are fully engaged in the entire mission of the university. There aren't silos where, "I'm a faculty and all I do is teach," or, "I'm staff and all I do is take care of the lawn or cook in the kitchen." What I mean by that is you've got an entire team of staff: faculty, staff, administration, and they're all involved in recruiting friends for the organization. They're all involved in recruiting students and getting students involved and wanting to become involved in the university. And they use their influence to help raise resources for the university, and so rather than the academics being responsible for the academics and the development office raising the money, everyone's involved in all of those processes. And when you create that kind of synergy, you create unity for a university, and that spurs growth and success.
You know, our Christian colleges and universities today are caught in quite a dilemma. They can no longer raise tuition in order to balance their budgets because of the economic pressures and costs of a college education today, and they lack the economies of scale to be able to stay up with all of the demands in terms of technology, improving programs and increasing faculty compensation. And so SignificantSystems is committed to come alongside our academic partners to help them create a 10-year sustainable model that focuses on key financial levers that will provide the economies of scale for small Christian universities so that they can be successful, and not just survive, but thrive, in the coming decade.
You know, we live in a global culture today, and I think it is so critical that every Christian college or university have a global presence, and that they focus on a particular area of the world, maybe based on their geographical location to other markets, like the Pacific Rim. And that they have a deliberate effort to connect to international students, both bringing students there and perhaps sending students for overseas experience. But we live in a very global environment today, and it's very important for our Christian colleges and universities to be looking at things through that global lens.
You know, most of our Christian colleges and universities are highly dependent on Pell Grants and student loans for a percentage of tuition. Now we know as it relates to things like funding to build buildings, that if you're a pervasively sectarian institution, you can't get tax exempt financing to build a chapel, or tax exempt financing to build a wing that you're going to be teaching religion in. And the day could come where the federal government wil say that you can no longer get Pell Grants or student loans to teach religion. And so I think our Christian colleges and universities need to keep that in focus and recognize that some day in the future, that those majors will have to be restructured a bit, or they'll have to recognize that for their pure religion major or their theological degrees, that they're going to have to offer those at lower tuition rates and not be able to provide student loans or Pell grants for the student that are majoring in those areas.
You know, we have an interesting tension in our country today from a value standpoint, and of course Christian colleges and universities stand for very important values in our culture. And part of the conflict there is when you have legislative mandates that might conflict with the value of a particular institution. And I think it's very important for our college leadership at every level to be prepared to address those types of conflicts appropriately. You can't put your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist because we've seen over the last 50 years major changes in the acceptance of certain traditional values that Christian colleges and universities would espouse. So I think it's very important from a legislative standpoint to be aware and be involved politically; be involved in encouraging legislative responses that will support your mission and your values as an organization. And not be so dependent on strictly government resources that if those resources should be less or they should change that you're not going to survive as an institution. So it's very important that the leadership at our colleges and universities be prepared for what could be an uncertain future.
You know, many colleges and universities are uncertain how much time they should put into planned giving work to develop resources for the future, and part of the challenge is they only have so many dollars to put into development staff, and those folks need to focus on raising the budget for this year. But it's not good stewardship to always be looking at only short-term. So I really encourage small Christian colleges and universities—even though you probably can't afford a full-time planned giving staff—that your major donor staff be trained in planned giving and know the basics of planned giving so that when they're out there talking to constituents, talking to donor prospects, they just know enough about planned giving to be able to encourage people to leave them in their wills and trusts. And if someone wants to do an immediate planned gift, a charitable trust or a gift annuity, have professionals that will volunteer and help and come alongside their staff to help complete those planned gifts.
I've been really privileged over these last four decades to work with a lot of college presidents. Normally, because of my background in development, advancement and planned giving, they'll contact me for advice in the development area. But a lot of them don't know I've worked in general marketing, in budget management and administration for a Christian university for seven years. And probably the best advice I ever give them is, number one, to recognize that as the President of the University, they have to be the chief fund raiser and friend raiser for the university. And they have to design their team and design their schedule so they're free to do that. And, number two--my second point of advice to them--is in their development department, so often development officers get so engaged in the university community and committee meetings, and this meeting and that meeting and that program, and ultimately if your development people aren't out there on the road with your major donors or cultivating donors, they're really not doing their jobs. So those tend to be the two biggest points of advice I give college presidents, particularly new college presidents.
One of the trends we see emerging is the fact that the cost for a traditional four-year Christian college or university is getting out of sight for most parents. One possible solution, we believe, is to really focus on a lower-cost Gen Ed solution, and the Christian colleges and universities to really focus on building their junior, and senior and their graduate level studies. Recognizing that if you have a lower-cost General Ed solution either online or through a program that's both campus-based and online-based, that they can really reduce the cost of the General Ed portion of a bachelor's degree. And we think that's one of the big trends that we're going to see emerge over the next few years.
Budgeting at small Christian colleges and universities can be a big challenge for a number of different reasons. Dr. Barton shares his philosophy on budgeting. It's critical that the stakeholders are involved in the budgeting process. You need to have people making the budget decisions who aren't embedded in a particular department or particular area. They represent the overall health of the institution in total, and through that healthy budgeting process, you will make good budget decisions and help take ownership. It's in the weeds that will make you successful—like knowing how many athletic socks the athletic department needs next year. As a budget committee, it shouldn't just be left to some lump sum budget. Dr. Barton is a firm believer in very detailed budgeting for small Christian colleges and universities, because that's the only way you keep control of your costs to be the best steward of every tuition dollar that you get.
You know, one area that small Christian colleges and universities have struggled with over the last decade is academic efficiencies and economies of scale. They've had accreditation pressure to improve the academic quality, which is great. They've had pressure to add additional programs and majors and staff up to build those and grow that, which is good. But through all of that effort and the increasing regulatory burden from an audit standpoint and from a Department of Education standpoint, all of those have created enormous pressure on small Christian colleges and universities to make their budget. And historically, the way they've tried to address their budget challenges is to increase tuition at rates far in excess of the rate of inflation. They've done it year after year, and you get the compound effect of these tuition increases, and suddenly college is no longer affordable. And so then they have to provide more scholarships to keep their student headcount up, and they can't raise the money for those scholarships. So many Christian colleges and universities have themselves in a proverbial "Catch 22," where they can no longer raise tuition at the rates they've raised tuition, but their cost structure almost demands it. And so that's the big challenge, and that's why SignificantSystems exists, is to help change the paradigm; bring in different financial levers other than raising tuition that can help small Christian colleges and universities not just survive, but thrive in the years to come.
It's very important for Christian colleges and universities today to have a culture of innovation, and what we mean by that is that they are recognizing that the freshmen who are entering colleges today grew up digitally. They don't buy books at the bookstore; they read books on their mobile device or their iPad. They have been raised so differently from a technology standpoint; and yet, if you look at education—particularly public education—it's so trailing technology and innovation today. It's very important that our Christian colleges and universities get ahead of that curve, not behind that curve. And that's one of the major areas where SignificantSystems will bring resources to bear to serve our colleges and universities, is help them go from, "we want to be innovative" to "we can be innovative," and here's the tools, here's the technology, here's the expertise to help you do that.
For a lot of years, I think our liberal arts Christian colleges and universities were less concerned with employment and where their graduates were going to be employed, and more concerned, quite frankly, with the subject matter that they were teaching or the major that they were going to graduate with, but those times have changed. And what they are going to be after they graduate is now becoming more and more important, both from a regulatory standpoint; from an accreditation standpoint. So colleges and universities need to establish stronger relationships with employers within their geographic area or within their Affinity Marketing groups to make sure that their programs are designed to meet the needs of the employer once their students graduate.
You know, it's difficult to build an endowment, because for most small Christian colleges and universities, they have so many demands for their resources. So, when I get asked the question, "should we have an endowment?" my answer is absolutely yes. I mean, budget $50K a year that goes into the endowment--or $10K a year. Budget something. And then as you're talking to donors you can say, "we have an endowment fund and we're building it." You'll find that people will become interested in making gifts to your endowment or doing planned gifts so that at the time of their death or after a certain number of years, assets would flow to the endowment. And I really encourage college presidents also when they have a capital campaign to build a building, that they include in part of that campaign an endowment to underwrite the operational costs of the building. And it's one small way to start gradually building endowments for a university that don't have large endowments right now. So there's no quick fix to building endowments. It's one gift at a time; one estate plan at a time; but if you get started you can be successful. And to some extent, you're planting seeds for a tree that someone else is going to enjoy the shade of in the future.
"In 1945 an Egyptian peasant discovered a collection of early Christian scriptures - the Nag Hammadi Codices, which revealed the existence of a Gnostic version of Christianity. Gnostics (derived from the Greek word gnosis - meaning `knowledge') felt that they could get to know God, and their own soul, going a step beyond faith. Their message, and the words of the `Gnostic Gospels' were buried in the sand of the Egyptian desert. Some scholars now believe these scriptures to be just as authentic, if not more so, than the books we collectively know as the New Testament."
Gnostics 1/4 - Knowledge of the Heart
Gnostics 2/4 - Cathars, the True Christians
Gnostics 3/4 - The Divinity of Man
Gnostics 4/4 - Crack in the Universe