Lasell's president has vision for community
College inaugurates ninth leader today
By Jeff Gilbride
DAILY NEWS STAFF
Lasell College President Michael Alexander's life has come full circle.
The ninth president has moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again, having held positions in film distribution, broadcast television and writing.
Alexander, a Sherborn resident who just turned 57, said he never stopped dreaming of becoming a college president. At today's inauguration his dreams will be realized.
"I started out on a path that was intended to follow a career in higher education...I was specifically interested in small liberal arts colleges," he said. "The older I got the more I wanted to get back into it and I really wanted to fulfill my dream."
Alexander grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where at 16 he met his wife Mary Barbara-Alexander. Later he attended the Harvard School of Education, his wife attending Smith College.
Soon after, Mary decided to pursue a career in acting and Michael followed her to Los Angeles.
"I ended up going to L.A. and without intending to do so, ended up working for one of the major Hollywood studios, MCA Universal," he said. "I had intended to continue my career in higher education but when we went to L.A., I tried writing for a while and got good and broke ... I went around networking for a job and in the same week, got four job offers. One from (California Institute of Technology) and three from Hollywood studios."
Alexander chose to accept a position at MCA Universal and eventually ran three of its companies.
"It was a job without a definition. It was just very intriguing and it paid more money and I owed people money," he said. "They asked me to return to New York and oversee USA (cable) Network. That was a joint venture."
Alexander said he eventually purchased a television station for MCA, WWOR-TV Channel 9, becoming the general manager of the station and president of MCA broadcasting.
"I was running the station and was on the board of the USA Network," he said. "Then MCA decided to sell themselves to a Japanese company, Pinelands Inc."
Two years later, the cable network was sold and Alexander decided to buy a technology company called Intermetrics Inc. in Cambridge, he said.
"For the third time I moved to the Boston area. This time to become Chairman and CEO. It was a public company that I bought with private equity backing," he said. "In four years I grew the revenue from about $50 million to about $230 million and increased the cash flow about ten times."
Alexander said that after 4<+>1<+>/<->2<-> years, the company was sold and he moved on to another chapter in his life.
"With same financial partners, I founded an independent film distribution company called Echo Bridge Entertainment headquartered in Needham with offices in LA and La Crosse, Wisc. That's a company that's still running strong."
When Alexander became president of Lasell College in July of last year, he handed over the reins of Echo Bridge Entertainment to one of his partners.
Alexander said he began looking at the college while overseeing the film distribution company. He said the president of a college in New Jersey, with whom he was aquatinted, introduced him to a search firm that specializes in finding new college presidents.
"I began to be included in the pool of candidates they had in search committees because I had a lot of relative experience," he said. "One day I was approached by a search firm about the Lasell job. Since it was 20 minutes from my home and a small college, the kind I was always interested in ...I was fortunate enough to be selected."
Since his appointment, Alexander said has worked on an aggressive strategy to increase the college's visibility and its size.
"My goals are the goals of the community," he said. "Rather than come in and impose my vision on the college, which seems to be me to be idiocy, what I did was orchestrate a process by which the Lasell community helped develop a strategic plan."
After his fourth month in the position, Alexander said he devised Vision 2012.
"That plan has a number of elements. We developed a new mission statement. We reviewed the values of the college and reaffirmed those values," he said. "It's a set of goals for the next five years."
Those goals include increasing the student body from 1,300 undergraduates and 80 graduate students to 1,600 undergraduates and 300 graduate students in the next five years, Alexander said.
He also hopes to double the college faculty in his five-year plan.
"We expect to hire 40 to 50 new faculty in the next five years. So far this spring, we have hired 11 new faculty for next fall," he said. "To support that we have to raise more money. We have to increase the endowment substantially."
Alexander said he also intends to add four new master degree programs over the next four years, three more athletic teams and will continue to diversify the college's faculty, staff and board of trustees.
"All that's going to require some new facilities. At least three new residence halls, two of which we have already approved and the two of which we are breaking ground on this June. They will be ready for the fall of 2009," he said. "We have to put all that additional faculty and staff somewhere so we need new offices."
His final goal is to build a new athletic facility on the campus or expand the current one.
Alexander said one of his major concerns for the school is increasing its visibility.
"One of the challenges for Lasell is to increase our visibility and create an identity for ourselves," he said. "We apply a consistent educational philosophy across our programs. That philosophy is we try to infuse practical experience in every course possible ... it's a learning by doing approach which we think fits with the learning styles of our students very well."
Alexander will be inaugurated today at 2 p.m. at the Lasell College Athletic Center.
Jeff Gilbride can be reached at 781-398-8005 or at jgilbrid@cnc.com
