What was deemed a “bold step” by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty in 1984 — their vote to make standardized tests optional for admission — has become a national march 30 years later.

NPR’s reports on a new study of 33 U.S. colleges and universities that yields more evidence to support what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ instinctively knew back in 1984: that standardized tests do not accurately predict college success.

And at their worst, NPR reports, standardized tests can narrow the door of college opportunity when America needs to give students more access to higher education, not less.

Dean of Admission Leigh Weisenburger: Your high school transcript “is a much bigger story” than standardized test scores:

The study’s principal investigator is Bill Hiss ’66, former ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ dean of admission and now retired from the college. Valerie Wilson Franks ’98 is the study’s co-author and lead investigator.

Hiss tells NPR’s Eric Westervelt that “this study will be a first step in examining what happens when you admit tens of thousands of students without looking at their SAT scores.”

What happens, Hiss says, is that if students “have good high school grades, they are almost certainly going to be fine” in college, “despite modest or low testing.”

In terms of college access nationally, the authors pose a rhetorical question, asking whether “standardized testing produces valuable predictive results, or does it artificially truncate the pools of applicants who would succeed if they could be encouraged to apply?”

The answer “is far more the latter.”

Specifically, requiring standardized tests for college admission can narrow the door of college opportunity for otherwise capable students who choose submit test scores: “low-income and minority students, as well as more young people who will be the first generation in their family to attend,” reports Westervelt.

“Defining Promise: Optional Standardized Testing Policies in American College and University Admissions,” looked at 123,000 student and alumni records at 33 private and public colleges. Submitter GPAs were .05 of a GPA point higher than non-submitters’, and submitter graduation rates were 0.6 percent higher than non-submitters’.

“By any standard, these are trivial differences,” write Hiss and Franks.

Roughly 3,000 four-year U.S. colleges and universities make SAT or ACT submissions optional.

Study author Bill Hiss ’66.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has studied its policy on a regular basis since 1984, so the new study is welcomed but not surprising to Leigh Weisenburger, dean of admission and financial aid.

“Prior to this 30-year study, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had done its own research, tracking the performance of submitters and non-submitters,” she explains. “Students who submit scores at the point of application and those who do not perform almost precisely the same at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”

“We know that the best predictor of college success is the high school transcript,” she says.

Reciting a sentence that she says is practically a “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ bumper sticker,” Weisenberg says that “while standardized tests are useful, we have found that three and a half years on a transcript will tell us much more about a student’s potential than three and a half hours on a Saturday morning.”

Annually, approximately 40 percent of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ applicants do not submit any standardized test scores.

Standardized tests were sometimes “unhelpful, misleading and unpredictive for students in whom ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has always been interested.”

When the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty voted to make test scores optional on Oct. 1, 1984 — with Hiss as admission dean — then-President Hedley Reynolds said that action was “a bold step by the faculty, reflecting deep concerns with the effectiveness of the SATs.” (ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ became test-optional in 1984 by no longer requiring SAT I. In 1990 all standardized testing became optional.)

A 1990 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Magazine story reviewing why ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ made the change noted that standardized testing by the 1980s was producing a kind of “mass hysteria” among high school students and their parents, “an unholy amalgam of passive surrender and frantic coaching for the test.”

It was also “a growing sense” that SATs were sometimes “unhelpful, misleading and unpredictive for students in whom ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has always been interested,” including students of color, rural and Maine students, and first-generation-to-college students.

In 1984, the Faculty Committee on Admission and Financial Aid offered three reasons for recommending the policy change

1. SATs were an inaccurate indicator of potential.

2. Prospective applicants were using median test scores published in guidebooks as a major factor in deciding whether or not to apply to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. “The faculty realized that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ should be seen first-hand,” said a story in the January 1985 issue of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Magazine. “Numbers cannot describe the tenor of a campus which has never had fraternities or sororities, a campus where students are respected as individuals.”

3. The relationship of family income to SAT success “worried the committee and conflicted with the mission of the college.” Noting the rise in SAT prep courses, the college worried that if coaching was successful, “it means that students with economic resources will enjoy undeserved advantages in admissions evaluations.”

In fact, the story said that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had studied the relationship of SATs to academic success for the prior five years, concluding that “the quality of the high school preparation (rigor of courses included) was consistently the best measure of the student’s potential at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”

“Whatever Bill sets his hand to, whatever he feels called to address, he engages fully with his full heart, mind and energy.”

At the Jan. 18 retirement reception in his honor, Bill Hiss ’66 acknowledges applause for his contributions to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. At left are his wife, Colleen Quint ’85, and daughter, Jessie. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

Those words, crafted by Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin Mays Professor of Religious Studies, sum up the character of service that Bill Hiss ’66 gave to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in the 34 years since his appointment as dean of admission in 1978.

Hiss, honored at a Jan. 18 reception in Perry Atrium, retired at the end of 2012.

Besides Bruce’s remarks (delivered by Admission staffer Uriel Gonzales ’11, as Bruce was at a conference in Paris on “Black Portraiture in the West”), speakers included Wylie Mitchell, who succeeded Hiss as dean and retired from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2011, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Magazine editor Jay Burns, who shared comments by former ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications director Patti Lawson, Advancement Vice President Sarah Pearson ’75 and President Clayton Spencer.

Spencer praised Hiss especially for his work on ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ optional-SAT policy that propelled the college into the national admissions spotlight. As a forceful and articulate critic of standardized testing, proving that it is not a reliable predictor of student potential, Hiss linked the college’s tradition of opportunity and excellence with the goals of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ optional-testing policy.

Later, Hiss led an array of college programs as vice president (and, recently, taught the first-year seminar “Literature through Cataclysm” as a lecturer in Asian Studies). He was also the unofficial college historian, a contemporary Harry Rowe.

Speaking from the alumni perspective, Pearson picked up on Bruce’s theme of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ being a near-religious calling for Hiss, who is a preacher himself.

She said that “alumni want to know that the college is being loved and well-cared for, the way we loved it as students. We’re happy to know that we have leaders like Bill who take such good care of the precious resource we know ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is.”

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell offers the keynote address during the “Open to the World” events on Oct. 27. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

Sharing the Chapel chancel with 15 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students supported in their studies by a statewide program that he founded, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell used incidents from his own life to drive home higher education’s value to both personal growth and economic success.

Praising ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as a college “in the forefront of higher education,” Mitchell addressed the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community Oct. 27 following the dedication ceremony for newly renovated Hedge and Roger Williams halls.

• Video: George’s Mitchell’s keynote address
  

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Nancy Cable introduced Mitchell with an impressive summation of the senator’s long career in public service.

George Mitchell, whose Mitchell Institute provides scholarships to Maine students, greets ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mitchell Scholars on Oct. 27. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

“The United States is the first true meritocracy in human history,” Mitchell told about 200 people in the Chapel. But that meritocracy is broken if its benefits aren’t available to all Americans. “We have to make certain that we can draw on the talents of every member of our society,” and improving access to higher education is one way to do that. (In discussing the rising inaffordability of higher education, Mitchell’s speech anticipated the college-costs symposium scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 29.)

Mitchell pulled out statistics to support the common wisdom that more education means greater financial health. In Maine, he said, recent studies have indicated that people holding a bachelor’s degree earn 50 percent more than those who don’t. Similarly, those who stopped with a high school diploma are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than B.A. holders.

“We have a huge challenge in front of us,” he said, “but it’s also a huge opportunity, and it can provide a huge benefit to our state and our society,” meaning the higher tax revenues and lower government spending that come with higher rates of college graduation.

“It is a good investment to help young people go to college.”

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell answers questions following his “Open to the World” keynote address as Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman looks on. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

In a parallel to a story told during the dedication by Paul Marks ’83, Mitchell used his own example to illustrate the transformational role education can have. During a question-and-answer session that followed his address, he described growing up in Waterville, Maine, a son of a woman who was a Lebanese immigrant and a father of Irish extraction. A poor athlete among siblings highly accomplished in sports, Mitchell had poor self-esteem and was an indifferent student.

But a teacher at Waterville High School took Mitchell aside, gave him a book (John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down) and told him to read it and give her an oral report on it. He read the book that night, she gave him another, and what followed was a literary year that turned Mitchell, a future federal judge, senator, peace-broker and author, into a reader. “My life would have been very different” without that teacher, he said.

Years later, as senator, Mitchell attended a University of Maine conference examining the aspirations of Maine’s young people. The message from the conference was that many young people in Maine, especially rural and low-income, had low aspirations.

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell speaks with a guest during a reception following Mitchell’s “Open to the World” keynote address.

After the conference, hoping to serve as a role model, Mitchell set himself the goal of visiting every Maine high school twice, once to speak at graduation and once to meet with students and teachers. “I saw in the eyes of many of those students a mirror image of myself at their age,” he said.

What grew out of that effort was the Mitchell Institute, founded in 1994. Based in Portland, the institute grants a Mitchell Scholarship to a graduating senior from every public high school in Maine who will attend a two-or four-year postsecondary degree program. Among the more than 1,800 Mitchell Scholars to date, 93 have attended ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Mitchell said.

The institute has an especially close connection to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, as ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ own William Hiss ’66, longtime admissions dean and now a development officer, was, Mitchell said, “the most influential person in advising how this program would be set up and implemented. “He was, and is, one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, in the field of education and beyond.”

(He was so impressed by Hiss that at one point, he asked Hiss to lead the institute. Hiss declined, but recommended someone else for the job — his wife, Colleen Quint ’86. A former Mitchell staffer in the Senate, she has been executive director since 1999.)

Mitchell has still another ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ connection in the late Edmund S. Muskie ’36, whom he described as “my mentor, my hero and ultimately my friend.” A former aide to Muskie during his long tenure in the U.S. Senate, Mitchell was later tapped to fill the Senate seat Muskie vacated when he became U.S. Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter.

Mitchell concluded his formal speech by describing the satisfaction he felt, from the perspective of an immigrant’s son, as a federal judge presiding over naturalization ceremonies. After the ceremonies, he used to ask the new Americans about their stories and why they wanted to be citizens. One young man, not yet a great English speaker, answered, “I came here because in America everybody has a chance.”

Mitchell said, “A young man who had been an American for 10 minutes, who could barely speak English, was able to sum up the meaning of being an American in a single sentence.”

Thomas Hedley Reynolds, known for nearly three decades of transformational leadership at two Maine educational institutions, died Tuesday, Sept. 22, at his home in Newcastle, Maine, after a long illness. He was 88 years old.

His wife of 24 years, Mary Bartlett Reynolds, was with him at the time of death.

Reynolds served as president of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College from 1967 through 1989, and of the University of New England from 1990 to 1995. His success as commander of an armored unit in the Mediterranean theater of World War II came to symbolize Reynolds’ qualities as an academic leader: far-reaching vision, decisiveness and energetic determination.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Reynolds presided over a regional school’s evolution into a national liberal arts college now regarded as one of the nation’s best. He led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to strengthen its faculty and curriculum, add such key facilities as a modern library and arts center, diversify its student body and eliminate the SAT requirement.

“He brought a renewed sense of confidence and purpose,” says John Cole, a faculty member who arrived soon after Reynolds and now holds an endowed history professorship bearing Reynolds’ name. “He enlarged this place, invigorated it, professionalized it.”

President Reynolds, circa 1975, leads the academic procession at Commencement.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College President Thomas Hedley Reynolds, fall 1983.Reynolds was president from 1967 to 1989.PHOTOGRAPH by David Wilkinson.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College President Thomas Hedley Reynolds, 1984.Reynolds was president from 1967 to 1989.Photograph by Frank Siteman.

President Reynolds and Robert D. Moss, vice president and director of the Olin Foundation Inc., review plans for the Olin Arts Center at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, 1984, shortly after ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ received a $4.1 million grant from the foundation to construct and equip a new arts center. Photograph by David Wilkinson.

President Reynolds stands on a backhoe as Julie Macdonald ’81 sits at the controls during the groundbreaking for Merrill Gymnasium in 1979. Photography courtesy of Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

President Reynolds, circa 1975. Photograph by Bachrach.

Presidents Emeriti Reynolds and Donald W. Harward (right) flank President-elect Elaine Tuttle Hansen prior to her inauguration in 2002.

President Reynolds applauds as Andrew Young (left), then a U.S. Congressman from Georgia, receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at the 1975 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement. Photograph by John Urban.

At Commencement 1981, President Reynolds greets civil rights leader, preacher and educator Benjamin Mays ’20. At Reynolds’ inauguration in 1967, Mays had delivered greetings on behalf of all ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni. Photo courtesy of Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

In 1977, President Reynolds tends to his sailboat, the Sea Bird. Photograph by Charlie Brown.

President Reynolds listens during Commencement 1979.

Reynolds left retirement to become the third president of the University of New England, in Biddeford. (The university added a Portland campus in 1996.) Originally taking the position on a short-term basis, Reynolds ended up giving that growing institution five years of valuable service.

“He saw something here, material in the raw that had the potentiality for greatness,” UNE trustee Neil Rolde wrote in a 1995 tribute to Reynolds in “Coastlines,” the UNE magazine. “That is perhaps his greatest gift to what is, after all, a fledgling institution, now on its feet, no longer shaky, ready to flex its muscles.”

Reynolds was born on Nov. 23, 1920, in New York, the son of Wallace and Helen (Hedley) Reynolds. He attended The Browning School in New York City and Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1938. In 1942 he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Williams College.

With America embroiled in World War II, Reynolds enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a unit commander in a tank battalion that fought in North Africa and Italy. Reynolds earned the Army’s Bronze Star and the French Croix de Guerre with Silver Star.

After the war, he earned a master’s degree in 1947 and a doctorate in history in 1953, both from Columbia University. After teaching at Hunter College and serving as staff historian for the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C., Reynolds joined the history faculty at Middlebury College in 1949.

Reynolds remained at Middlebury for 18 years, becoming head of the history department and dean of men in 1957, and dean of the college seven years later. He was known there as “Dean Tom.”

Reynolds became ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ fifth president in January 1967. The expansion and evolution that distinguished his tenure touched nearly every facet of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience, from student life to academics, from physical facilities to college finances.

“Hedley felt it was his job was to make the big decisions, and then to let his officers run their own operations,” says William Hiss, a 1966 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumnus, admissions dean under Reynolds and now vice president for external affairs. “For all his tank-commander management style and very private personality, he made a whole raft of big decisions for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ correctly.”

The championing of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty was perhaps Reynolds’ greatest achievement. “Throughout his presidency, his core interest was developing the quality of the faculty, and consequently the quality of the curriculum and of the undergraduate experience,” says Carl Benton Straub, a professor emeritus of religion and the Clark A. Griffith Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies. Straub served as dean of faculty under Reynolds for 15 years.

“He had a clear understanding of what excellence was in a college of the liberal arts and sciences. He knew how to instill in the faculty a sense of pride in the institution and the self-confidence to develop the quality of the place.”

An early step was Reynolds’ emphasis on improving salaries in an effort to attract and retain high-quality faculty. Under his administration, the faculty grew from 65 full-time equivalents, with 46 percent holding doctorates, to 114 full-time equivalents with 80 percent holding the Ph.D. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ markedly improved its faculty-student ratio during the Reynolds years, as well as achieving greater gender equity.

Reynolds led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in diversifying its student body — academically, geographically, ethnically and racially. It was during his tenure that the college ceased to require that student applicants report their SAT scores, a move that widened the range of accepted students without affecting academic standards, as later ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ studies showed.

Arriving at a time of student dissatisfaction with strict and archaic campus social rules, Reynolds guided ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ through the tensions of the late 1960s and 1970s. In May 1970, Reynolds famously drove a truck to support ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students who, responding to a national student strike protesting the Vietnam War, performed three days of community service in Lewiston.

Reynolds’ tenure at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ saw the construction of a new library, an arts center, a field house and the conversion of the former women’s athletic building into the Edmund S. Muskie Archives. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ created four new academic departments, expanded its distinctive five-week spring Short Term semester and established the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival, now a nationally renowned summer program.

“He had great generosity of spirit,” says Judith Marden, a member of the college class of 1966 and former ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ administrator who worked with Reynolds. “He was wonderful to work with — full of energy, direct, outspoken, generous with his time and his opinions and his war stories.

“You always knew who he was and what he stood for.”

Reynolds took the helm of the University of New England just 12 years after that institution was born from the merger of a small liberal arts college and a school of osteopathic medicine. His tenure was marked by steady increases in student enrollment, academic prestige and financial capability. A signal Reynolds achievement was the construction of the Harold Alfond Center for Health Sciences, product of a capital campaign that won the university’s first million-dollar gift.

Reynolds’ confidence in UNE, wrote Rolde, “has bred excitement and success, which in turn generates further excitement and success.”

Off campus, Reynolds served as a director of the Public Broadcasting Service in Washington, D.C., and as a trustee and chairman of the board of WCBB-TV in Lewiston; a member and director of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities; a longtime director of Liberty Mutual; and a director and president of the New England Colleges Fund.

He chaired the Governor’s Special Commission on the Status of Education in Maine. “Because of the outstanding work he did . . . [in that role], thousands of Maine children will be better prepared to live productive lives when they leave public school,” former Maine Gov. Joseph Brennan noted in a letter in the Portland Press Herald.

Reynolds held honorary degrees from Williams, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ colleges and from the University of Maine.

Known on campus as a private man, Reynolds was a voracious reader and an outdoorsman who enjoyed skiing, tennis and particularly sailing.

Reynolds was predeceased by his parents and by a son, David Hewson Reynolds, one of four children born during his marriage to Jean Fine Lytle. They married in 1943.

In addition to his wife and Jean Lytle of Randolph, Vt., he is survived by a sister, Elizabeth Reynolds Henderson of Locust Valley, N.Y.; two sons, Thomas Scott Reynolds of West Tisbury, Mass., and John Hedley Reynolds of Stannard, Vt.; and a daughter, Tay R. Simpson, also of Randolph.

— by Doug Hubley, Staff Writer

Thomas Hedley Reynold served as president of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College from 1967 through 1989. (David Wilkinson for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College President Thomas Hedley Reynolds, 1984.Reynolds was president from 1967 to 1989.Photograph by Frank Siteman.

President Reynolds and Robert D. Moss, vice president and director of the Olin Foundation Inc., review plans for the Olin Arts Center at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, 1984, shortly after ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ received a $4.1 million grant from the foundation to construct and equip a new arts center. Photograph by David Wilkinson.

President Reynolds stands on a backhoe as Julie Macdonald '81 sits at the controls during the groundbreaking for Merrill Gymnasium in 1979. Photography courtesy of Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

President Reynolds, circa 1975. Photograph by Bachrach.

Thomas Hedley Reynolds, known for nearly three decades of transformational leadership at two Maine educational institutions, died Tuesday, Sept. 22, at his home in Newcastle, Maine, after a long illness. He was 88 years old.

His wife of 24 years, Mary Bartlett Reynolds, was with him at the time of death.

Reynolds served as president of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College from 1967 through 1989, and of the University of New England from 1990 to 1995. His success as commander of an armored unit in the Mediterranean theater of World War II came to symbolize Reynolds’ qualities as an academic leader: far-reaching vision, decisiveness and energetic determination.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Reynolds presided over a regional school’s evolution into a national liberal arts college now regarded as one of the nation’s best. He led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to strengthen its faculty and curriculum, add such key facilities as a modern library and arts center, diversify its student body and eliminate the SAT requirement.

“He brought a renewed sense of confidence and purpose,” says John Cole, a faculty member who arrived soon after Reynolds and now holds an endowed history professorship bearing Reynolds’ name. “He enlarged this place, invigorated it, professionalized it.”

A memorial service for President Emeritus Reynolds takes place at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Chapel, College Street. For more information, please call the Office of the President, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, at 207-786-6102. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to:

The Thomas Hedley Reynolds Professorship in History, in care of the Office of College Advancement, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, 2 Andrews Road, Lewiston, Maine 04240;

Or, to the scholarship fund at the University of New England in President Reynolds’ memory, in care of Scott Marchildon ’95, assistant vice president of institutional advancement, UNE, 716 Stevens Ave., Portland, Maine 04103; telephone 207-221-4230.

Reynolds left retirement to become the third president of the University of New England, in Biddeford. (The university added a Portland campus in 1996.) Originally taking the position on a short-term basis, Reynolds ended up giving that growing institution five years of valuable service.

“He saw something here, material in the raw that had the potentiality for greatness,” UNE trustee Neil Rolde wrote in a 1995 tribute to Reynolds in “Coastlines,” the UNE magazine. “That is perhaps his greatest gift to what is, after all, a fledgling institution, now on its feet, no longer shaky, ready to flex its muscles.”

Reynolds was born on Nov. 23, 1920, in New York, the son of Wallace and Helen (Hedley) Reynolds. He attended The Browning School in New York City and Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1938. In 1942 he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Williams College.

With America embroiled in World War II, Reynolds enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a unit commander in a tank battalion that fought in North Africa and Italy. Reynolds earned the Army’s Bronze Star and the French Croix de Guerre with Silver Star.

After the war, he earned a master’s degree in 1947 and a doctorate in history in 1953, both from Columbia University. After teaching at Hunter College and serving as staff historian for the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C., Reynolds joined the history faculty at Middlebury College in 1949.

Reynolds remained at Middlebury for 18 years, becoming head of the history department and dean of men in 1957, and dean of the college seven years later. He was known there as “Dean Tom.”

Reynolds became ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ fifth president in January 1967. The expansion and evolution that distinguished his tenure touched nearly every facet of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience, from student life to academics, from physical facilities to college finances.

“Hedley felt it was his job was to make the big decisions, and then to let his officers run their own operations,” says William Hiss, a 1966 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumnus, admissions dean under Reynolds and now vice president for external affairs. “For all his tank-commander management style and very private personality, he made a whole raft of big decisions for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ correctly.”

Reynolds’ contributions to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ are documented in his administration files, available at the Muskie Archives and .

The championing of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty was perhaps Reynolds’ greatest achievement. “Throughout his presidency, his core interest was developing the quality of the faculty, and consequently the quality of the curriculum and of the undergraduate experience,” says Carl Benton Straub, a professor emeritus of religion and the Clark A. Griffith Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies. Straub served as dean of faculty under Reynolds for 15 years.

“He had a clear understanding of what excellence was in a college of the liberal arts and sciences. He knew how to instill in the faculty a sense of pride in the institution and the self-confidence to develop the quality of the place.”

An early step was Reynolds’ emphasis on improving salaries in an effort to attract and retain high-quality faculty. Under his administration, the faculty grew from 65 full-time equivalents, with 46 percent holding doctorates, to 114 full-time equivalents with 80 percent holding the Ph.D. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ markedly improved its faculty-student ratio during the Reynolds years, as well as achieving greater gender equity.

Reynolds led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in diversifying its student body — academically, geographically, ethnically and racially. It was during his tenure that the college ceased to require that student applicants report their SAT scores, a move that widened the range of accepted students without affecting academic standards, as later ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ studies showed.

Arriving at a time of student dissatisfaction with strict and archaic campus social rules, Reynolds guided ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ through the tensions of the late 1960s and 1970s. In May 1970, Reynolds famously drove a truck to support ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students who, responding to a national student strike protesting the Vietnam War, performed three days of community service in Lewiston.

Reynolds’ tenure at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ saw the construction of a new library, an arts center, a field house and the conversion of the former women’s athletic building into the Edmund S. Muskie Archives. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ created four new academic departments, expanded its distinctive five-week spring Short Term semester and established the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival, now a nationally renowned summer program.

“He had great generosity of spirit,” says Judith Marden, a member of the college class of 1966 and former ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ administrator who worked with Reynolds. “He was wonderful to work with — full of energy, direct, outspoken, generous with his time and his opinions and his war stories.

“You always knew who he was and what he stood for.”

Reynolds took the helm of the University of New England just 12 years after that institution was born from the merger of a small liberal arts college and a school of osteopathic medicine. His tenure was marked by steady increases in student enrollment, academic prestige and financial capability. A signal Reynolds achievement was the construction of the Harold Alfond Center for Health Sciences, product of a capital campaign that won the university’s first million-dollar gift.

Reynolds’ confidence in UNE, wrote Rolde, “has bred excitement and success, which in turn generates further excitement and success.”

Off campus, Reynolds served as a director of the Public Broadcasting Service in Washington, D.C., and as a trustee and chairman of the board of WCBB-TV in Lewiston; a member and director of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities; a longtime director of Liberty Mutual; and a director and president of the New England Colleges Fund.

He chaired the Governor’s Special Commission on the Status of Education in Maine. “Because of the outstanding work he did . . . [in that role], thousands of Maine children will be better prepared to live productive lives when they leave public school,” former Maine Gov. Joseph Brennan noted in a letter in the Portland Press Herald.

Reynolds held honorary degrees from Williams, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ colleges and from the University of Maine.

Known on campus as a private man, Reynolds was a voracious reader and an outdoorsman who enjoyed skiing, tennis and particularly sailing.

Reynolds was predeceased by his parents and by a son, David Hewson Reynolds, one of four children born during his marriage to Jean Fine Lytle. They married in 1943.

In addition to his wife and Jean Lytle of Randolph, Vt., he is survived by a sister, Elizabeth Reynolds Henderson of Locust Valley, N.Y.; two sons, Thomas Scott Reynolds of West Tisbury, Mass., and John Hedley Reynolds of Stannard, Vt.; and a daughter, Tay R. Simpson, also of Randolph.

— by Doug Hubley, Staff Writer

The findings of the study will be presented Oct. 1 in Milwaukee at the 60th national conference of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty voted to make SATs optional for admission to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in October 1984, and after five years of evaluation voted to make all testing optional in November 1990. From the outset, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ shared its research results, and at this 20th anniversary, has conducted a comprehensive performance and outcomes analysis of about 7,000 submitters and non-submitters since 1984.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Vice President William C. Hiss, who led the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ admissions office as dean or vice president from 1978 to 2000, said the findings “raise a national policy issue: Does standardized testing narrow access to higher education, significantly reducing the pool of students who would succeed if admitted?”

Hiss noted that standardized tests can be one of several barriers to higher education. Increased college costs, cuts to K-12 budgets that affect guidance, higher education cuts in either financial aid or course offerings, and standardized testing may all contribute to reduced access for low-income students.

Among the findings of this 20-year study:

• The difference in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduation rates between submitters and non-submitters is 0.1% (one-tenth of one percent).
• The difference in overall GPAs at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is .05 (five-hundredths of a GPA point); the exact difference is 3.06 for non-submitters and 3.11 for submitters.
• ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has almost doubled its applicant pool since making testing optional; about a third of each class at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ enters without submitting testing in the admissions process.
• Testing is not necessary for predicting good performance; the academic ratings assigned by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ admissions staff are highly accurate for both submitters and non-submitters in predicting GPA.
• Optional testing policies are often assumed to be a device for affirmative action efforts. Students of color use an optional testing policy at somewhat higher than average rates, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has increased its enrollment of students of color and international students. But white students using the policy outnumber students of color by 5-to-1.
• The policy draws sharply increased application rates from all the subgroups who commonly worry about standardized testing: women, U.S. citizens of color, international citizens, low-income or blue collar students, rural students, students with learning disabilities and students with rated talents in athletics, the arts or debate.
• There are very modest differences in the majors that submitters and non-submitters choose at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, but some intriguing patterns: Non-submitters are more likely to major in fields that put a premium on creativity and originality.
• There are modest differences in the career outcomes of submitters and non-submitters, with one glaring exception: the four fields where students have to take another standardized test to gain entrance to graduate programs for medicine, law, an M.B.A. or Ph.D. In fields where success does not depend on further standardized testing—including business executive officers and finance careers—submitters and non-submitters are equally represented.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling’s (NACAC) national conference is the largest annual gathering of college admission professionals. The conference attracts more than 4,000 attendees annually, including secondary school counselors, college admission officers, independent counselors, financial aid administrators, enrollment managers and affiliate organization members.

Related information:

Graphics supporting the findings of the study are available at: h

William C. Hiss’ prepared remarks are available at:

NPR, “All Things Considered”, January 4, 2005:

Outside press responses to William C. Hiss’ study:

William C. Hiss ’66, Vice President for External Affairs
Prem R. Neupane ’05

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, Lewiston, ME

A paper presented at the 60th Annual Meeting of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling

Milwaukee, WI
October 1, 2004

Image 1

(Comments below are keyed to slide #’s on the accompanying PowerPoint.)

Nineteen years ago this week, I gave with three wonderful colleagues the closing keynote session at NACAC, a talk entitled “Admissions as Ministry.” All four of us—Dick Moll, Betsy DeLaHunt, Zina Zacque and I—had considered the ministry and ended up in Admissions, and our talks drew out, often with piquant humor, the parallels between the two careers. I never said better why I made Admissions my life’s work, and still remember dozens of people coming up afterwards to hug us, crying. I realized on the plane home that my suit was ruined, from all that wet make-up.

That was the year after ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ made testing optional, and I think it no accident that three of us on that panel—myself, Dick at Bowdoin and Betsy at Sarah Lawrence—had led colleges to make testing optional. We had each thought a lot about an ethical issue: Are we helping young people with this process? Are we doing things that hurt them? We weren’t trying to point a finger at standardized testing as though it came from the forces of darkness; it hasn’t. But at least in our judgment at the time, testing was occupying too much emotional space, and kids were being hurt, either in self-esteem or in actual admissions decisions, in their access to higher ed. So we were going to try another tack, not with a statement of moral rectitude, but as an attempt to say, “How can we help kids to believe in themselves, to channel their time and energies into sluice gates of causes and values worth of their efforts?”

Hard to imagine, but this is the 20th anniversary of the decision at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to make SAT’s optional for admission, and we researched the issue for five years before recommending it to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty, so in all, a 25-year project for this quite literal grey beard. SAT’s were made optional in 1984; all testing was made optional in 1990. This presentation is a 20-year retrospective study of the policy, and I would praise my co-author, Prem Neupane, a senior at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from Nepal, who did the statistical research you will see. That students like Prem can come from very different cultures, work in a second or third language, and have a scholarly paper read at a national conference before they finish their undergraduate degree at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, is one mark of the success of this policy.

From the outset, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ decided to share its data and research on the policy. We have done major research projects at roughly 5-year intervals, and provided the data and articles to any press outlets or other colleges which asked for them, including a fine college represented here today. There has been amazing consistency of findings in our data over 20 years, and now some intriguing outcome data in our alumni.

The report is in 17 images on which I will have a few comments, but running like a scarlet thread through the data are three fundamental policy issues, on which organizations like NACAC should debate as national priorities.

(1) Does requiring the tests open or truncate access to higher education? Call this a marketing issue if you like–who will apply?—or an access issue—who is allowed to go to college and where will they go?

(2) How predictive are the tests? Are they consistently predictive across populations? Are they “standardized” because people take the same test, or because their predictive value is consistent? As you will see, we seriously question the latter argument.

(3) What are the definitions of intelligence and achievement which a college (or society) signals to its youth with such a policy? What are the career and graduate degree results of our policy?

Underneath all three of these issues is a fundamental question of social ethics and social policy: who gets to go to college, and what are the definitions of intelligence and achievement which a college, or a society, signals to young people by what it requires for admission. Many of us are deeply indebted to the work of two of America’s premier educational thinkers in this generation, Howard Gardner and Jonathon Kozol. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ sees itself as being a small Petri dish of Howard Gardner’s work on the multiple definitions of intelligence, and I think Professor Gardner regards ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as one of his small Petri dishes. I would acknowledge with profound gratitude his new gestalt on human intelligence. What you are about to see is the efforts of an “in the trenches” disciple of Gardner and Kozol.

Image 2

Some of you may know Woody Allen’s wonderful movie, “Annie Hall”, where he looks at the camera to talk about a fellow who thought he was a chicken. People tried to get his relatives to get him into some therapy to get over this obsession about being a chicken, and the relatives said, “Well, we would, but we need the eggs.”

At some levels, this discussion is about holding on obsessively, perhaps neurotically, to something that demonstrably doesn’t make any sense. We might as a gesture of health say to our young people, “You are not a chicken!”, and say to each other, “We do not need these eggs.”

It also is about being willing to take down a structure to see more clearly, to try a different way, which is the point of the Japanese haiku.

Image 3

Now we start to look at the first of our three principles, the access issue, or if you prefer, the marketing issue. The applicant pool at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has almost doubled, from 2200 to 4200, since we made testing optional, while admits and enrollees went up marginally.

A proposal for national debate, both at the college level and for the current “No Child Left Behind” emphasis on testing: Does testing truncate access and success more than it helps identify promise or achievement?

The most basic question for any admissions dean: Can you get a better class from twice as many applications? Of course you can, and on all the scales.

In this and previous studies, we asked statistical experts at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to check and critique our work. Michael Murray, a renowned international economist at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ who designs national economies and central banking systems for third world countries, said to me, “Bill, you shouldn’t be comparing submitters and non-submitters!” I thought, “Oh no, into what statistical blind alley is Michael leading me.” He went on, “You should be comparing the enrolled non-submitters with the students you would have had to admit if you didn’t have 1500 non-submitter applicants from which to choose the very best.” He is right, of course, and at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and most colleges, that would comprise the entire wait list and a decent slice of the refuse pool.

Image 4

Women, international students, and U.S. multicultural students gained a lot, but all cells of our pool increased. We know have enough applications from abroad to fill the class twice over, and have no American citizens in the class. Many of the international applicants are some of the brightest people in their countries, and there is no question but that the influx of highly talented international students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has turned up the intellectual thermostat for the whole college. The numbers of students of color and international students are still not large, but we have increased those populations by between two and four times.

Image 5

From 1984 to 1990 about a quarter of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students entered with no SATs; when all testing was made optional in 1990, the percentage of students not submitting testing rose to the mid-to-high 30% range and stayed there.

From 1992 to the present, 129 (about 3% of the total enrolled students) SAT I Non-submitters submitted SAT IIs. We have significant volumes of AP’s, A levels, and IB’s, but most of them come in late in the senior year for placement and advanced credit use, so they are not part of this research.

Image 6

These data are a snapshot of use of the policy by students of color, and by gender. Measurably more women than men will use the policy, and use by non-whites is about 8% higher than for non-whites. Hispanic and Black students will use the policy at a rate about 10%-15% higher than the class averages.

But something important should be pointed out here. Optional testing is often assumed to be a device for an affirmative action policy, to open the admissions process from a narrow statistical review to a more complex and subtle reading. And it does that. But white students using the policy outnumber the students of color by about five to one. We have found that the policy appeals to all the subgroups of students which folk wisdom would tell you are the students not being much helped by standardized testing in admissions: women, rural and blue collar students, immigrants, learning disabled students, students with spike talents in something (arts, chemistry, athletics, debate, theatre, dance, political or campus leadership), and students who speak a second language, no matter what their ethnicity or citizenship. We found heavy percentages of non-submitters from Maine, because so many are rural or low-income, and have neither the money nor even the physical access to be coached for tests. But we also found an intriguing pattern of high percentages of non-submitters across the top of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont: they turned out largely to be young people of French-Canadian heritage. They may have been US Citizens for several generations, but still speak French at home, and are carrying two grammars, vocabularies and syntaxes in their heads.

Image 7

Now we get to the second major point and heart of this report: What are the productive results of the policy? Over the 20-year history of the policy, the difference in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ GPAs between submitters and non-submitters is .05 of a GPA point.

Image 8

And the difference in graduation rates is 0.1%. .05% of a GPA point, and one-tenth of one percent difference in graduation rates. On this we hang the national sluice gate system about who gets into college and where they go?

We could spend the rest of the time talking about these two slides, which are the heart of this report. In a word, in a college generally regarded as a highly demanding academic environment, non-submitters earn exactly the same grades, and graduate at exactly the same rates, as do submitters.

Let’s have a little thought experiment to expand this finding out to national access policy. In California, that bellwether state so often several years ahead of the rest of us. I refer you to Eugene Garcia’s report of several years ago on Hispanic admission to the public institutions in California. The U-Cal public university admission rate for Hispanic students has been over the years less than 4%, and Hispanic students comprise 50% of the K-12 school cohort. Does this pass a common sense test of access to a public university system, to have a 4% admit rate for 50% of the school population? Does it pass a test of social ethics? I am not pointing a finger at California, but asking a common sense question about our country: are we getting the students the education they need to be competitive? In California, it has always been an article of faith that the state colleges and extensive community college system will provide much wider access than the state universities. But with state budget cuts, the curriculum of the entire community college system in California was just reduced by 4%, stranding 117,000 students seeking access to the community colleges. In Maine, we have lost startling percentages of our manufacturing jobs to overseas competition. What will people do for employment who are turned away from various forms of higher education, which has been by far the major route to economic improvement?

The same question must be asked about No Child Left Behind, which is largely driven by standardized testing results. How much are we truncating our success rates by using testing?

Image 9

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Non-Submitters enter with very marginally lower academic ratings, and marginally higher academic ratings.

Image 10

On average, Submitters score about 90 points above the Non-Submitters in Verbal SAT, and 70 points above non-submitters in Math SAT, for a total SAT gap of 160 points. This TSAT gap has been amazingly stable for the entire history of the policy, and if there reasons for that, we cannot see them.

Image 11

Yet for both submitters and non-submitters, the Admissions Office is able to read folders accurately and make very accurate predictions of success at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

It is sometimes said that an optional testing policy will only work at a small college able to read applicants individually and thoughtfully. With respect, I think this is nonsense. Lots of large research universities read folders just as carefully as small colleges. Another national policy and social ethics question: What are the public costs of not admitting students who would succeed, in order to run a simple, inexpensive admissions process driven by class ranks and testing? If ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ experience can be extrapolated to other kinds of institutions—one can wish that many colleges on Fairtest’s list of 700 colleges not requiring or de-emphasizing scores would publish more research on their policies—we may be throwing away as much as a third of our potential national talent.

Image 12

While testing seems to have some very basic correlation with GPAs, non-submitters seem to outperform submitters with the same SAT scores, but for both groups, the lines are pretty flat, because virtually everyone is succeeding.

Image 13

And now to the third major point: how do wider definitions of achievement and intelligence play out in students’ choice of majors, careers and graduate fields?

There are some modest over-weights toward submitters in math and sciences, and corresponding over-weights to non-submitters in social sciences.

Image 14

The patterns of distribution by majors are intriguing, and I have made four groupings of majors in this slide. First, in three majors generally regarded as among the toughest at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€”chemistry, biological chemistry and neuroscience—the percentages of submitters and non-submitters are very close. Second, in only three of our 32 majors is there a clear imbalance toward submitters: Math, Philosophy and Physics, but remember that when we get to the next slide. Third is a grouping of majors that folk wisdom would suggest are places that would reward imagination, intuition, unconventional thinking, interest in other unexplored culture, new ways of viewing experience, and the like. In this group—African American Studies, American Cultural Studies, Art, Classical and Medieval Studies, Theatre, Women and Gender Studies, and Self-designed majors—there are patterns of non-submitters being equally or strongly represented. And in our largest majors—Biology, Economics, English, History, Political Science and Psychology—there are only modest trends by submitters or non-submitters.

Image 15

This slide was something of an experiment and dense with data, but intriguing. We separated by majors, and graphed GPA difference against SAT difference. In the large majority of departments, submitters and non-submitters are within .1 of a GPA point of the mean. Remember Math, Philosophy and Physics, the departments with many more submitters? Two of them have 200 point differences in SATs, but only math has a larger than average GPA difference.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, taking a double major is a sign of intellectual ambition. There are 313 double majors: 108 Non-Submitters, 205 Submitters, just about the ratio of non-submitters to submitters.

Image 16

With now a 20-year time line, we can begin to look at graduate degrees and career outcomes, and there are some fascinating patterns. In general, there is very little evidence of submitters and non-submitters having different career tracks, with one glaring exception, which you will see.

In creative or human service fields like the arts, broadcasting, or education, non-submitters are represented at slightly higher rates, while the opposite is true in data processing and scientific or technical fields.

Image 17

In this slide, we divided career fields by both submitter status and by gender. Perhaps this image looks a lot better than it would have 30 years ago, but one conclusion that jumps out is that is not submitter or non-submitter that shapes more than a few career decisions, but still gender. The shapes of the graphs from top to bottom are amazingly parallel.

Image 18

Another interesting snapshot of outcomes. We isolated alumni in several specific fields, including two highly competitive fields, CEOs, (including founders, managing directors, heads of corporate divisions, etc.), and financial analysts/advisors (stockbrokers, hedge fund types, etc.). The percentages of submitters and non-submitters are about the same. So that’s good news. Not so with lawyers and doctors.

Image 19

And here is the glaring exception. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni earn graduate degrees at quite high rates: about 70% of all ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni will earn at least one graduate degree. At the Master’s Degree level, the percentage of submitters and non-submitters are quite close. But in fields that require another standardized test for admission, there are big, visible gaps between submitters and non-submitters: MBAs, PhDs, MDs and JD’s. I mean this as a honest and not a rhetorical question: are these the best, or just the best test-takers? Let that question go proxy for a lot of what we need to understand better than we do.

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS presented a segment about “The Great SAT Debate” on March 29. Bill Hiss ’66, vice president for external and alumni affairs at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, was among the participants, who appeared via satellite uplinks from around the country.

Hiss led ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ admissions office as dean from 1978 to 1995 —  before the 1984 decision to make SATs optional at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and in the years of assessment since.

The other guests were: Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California System. Atkinson recently dropped a bombshell in academe when he announced that he will recommend dropping the SAT I requirement for the entire UC system.

Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board and former governor of West Virginia. The College Board administers the SAT.

John A. Blackburn, dean of admissions for the University of Virginia, a top public university that requires SATs.