Wally Stettinius: Life Trustee, Wise Counselor

   “We were using technology aggressively in our business,” he said, “so I had some sense of where technology was going. I’d headed the sub-committee on technology for Richmond Renaissance to help the city schools and saw what they were doing. I told Rob (headmaster F. Robertson Hershey) that this was something we had to look at. I didn’t have to push hard.”

   Collegiate’s Board of Trustees subsequently provided funding, and the rest, as they say, is history.

   “We found that latent within the faculty were people who were pretty sophisticated (technologically),” Stettinius continued. “All we did was give the faculty $250,000 for training, hardware, and software. They had to figure out how to use it. Twenty years later, we’re probably using computers as well as anybody.”

   Stettinius is an astute, well-respected businessman, teacher, community leader, and mentor. Many consider him a guru and visits with him a trip to the mountaintop.

   From 1967 through 1995, he served as chief executive officer of William Byrd Press, then Cadmus Corporation. In recent years, he’s taught at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, focused on his work with non-profits, and headed the board of GrayCo, a family-owned commercial real estate investment company.

   Stettinius joined Collegiate’s Board of Trustees in 1969 at the behest of headmaster Malcolm U. Pitt Jr., his English teacher at Woodberry Forest in 1947, and has held forth ever since. He served two terms as chairman: 1980-82 and 1988-90.

His three children and four of his seven grandchildren are Collegiate graduates. Considering his nearly half-century association with the school, Stettinius brings invaluable perspective to Collegiate’s evolution, a fact readily apparent during a recent conversation.

   Who knows? It certainly was the primary attraction and a source of great loyalty. He had integrity, a commitment to his profession, and a very commanding presence. He had a great saying: “You don’t measure us by our best kids. They’re going to make it anywhere. You measure us by what we do with the average kids or the kids that have trouble. That’s where we earn our pay.”

   I always felt that you have to give back. Collegiate is a very special place in the lives of our children. I don’t expect you could get a better education than they and our grandchildren got, an education defined in the broadest sense of character as well as academics.

   Talk about Collegiate in the early days when the Mooreland campus was essentially a start-up operation.

   Coming out of downtown, Collegiate had maybe 50 years behind it. Mrs. (Catharine) Flippen (headmistress of the Collegiate School for Girls on Monument Avenue) was a classic educator. She and Mac (Pitt) became a very, very interesting couple. Mac was by title her boss, but he was totally deferential and considerate, a gentleman in every sense of the word. The teachers make the school. They were old-line teachers. They always attempted to do the right thing.

   The school operated on very limited resources back then.
   Collegiate wasn’t deprived based on standards in those days. We had a pretty good place. It was a lot smaller. Patrons were always the backbone of the school. They were always committed. If you think in terms of life cycles, what’s distinguished Collegiate is that it’s always been a little hungry. It’s always reached out to a broad range of people. There’s been a very inclusive kind of environment. Over the years, as the school has grown and matured based on demonstrated competence, it’s never gotten arrogant. It’s kept reinventing itself. There were bumps in the road along the way. There were inflection points where you make decisions that were tough but necessary.

   The structural change in 1986 was a turning point.

   It came about in a very interesting way. We had a Girls School that excelled in the arts, but kids weren’t getting the athletics and science. The Boys School had the athletics and the math and science. The only people who really opposed (the transition) were the alumni. The teachers, all the professionals, said the best way to move Collegiate forward was to be co-ed, respecting the traditions of the two genders but also having a Middle School that was run by middle school people, not as a subset of high schools. That was a major, major breakthrough in terms of setting the course.

   What does the future hold?

  There’re two big-time questions that confront Collegiate. What will a classroom look like in 10 or 15 years? It’s going to look very different. The classrooms today are more like 15 years ago than the classrooms in 15 years will be like they are today. One of my fondest memories is when I was chairman, Rob asked me to speak to the faculty. My talk was, if we’re so good, why do we have to be better? I said we are very, very good. Then I laid out why we had to be better. That’s as applicable today. Our competition is free, and it’s getting better so you can’t get comfortable. You have to learn that the bar on education is constantly going up. The teacher is no longer the source of information but the coordinator. Of course, everybody knows that you have active learning, passive learning, and experiential learning.
   The latter is far-and-away the most powerful. Passive learning – sitting, taking notes, and regurgitating back – is the least effective except in certain situations, classes.
   If you want to teach people to learn, to think, to have self-confidence, that’s where it’s going in a school like Collegiate because it doesn’t have a bureaucracy. It has resources. It can lead the way.

   I’m still emotionally involved. I’m a great believer that there’re times you move on and let other people do it. I don’t want to be sitting in a room, pretending to be a sage, talking about the old days.

I’ve always thought about the future. I love the term “cock-sure ignorance” versus “uncertain wisdom.” Once you think you’re a sage, you’ve just become cock-sure ignorant. It’s really important to understand what you don’t know.

   What I try to teach my students (at VCU and UVA) is that strategy breaks down to a simple thought: planning’s not about future decisions. It’s about the future of present decisions. Are you doing the things you need to do today to have the future you want? To have some sense of the future, what’s really important is what you’re doing today on that journey.

   History is gone. You learn from it. The future is abstract. You live only in the present.

   Collegiate is a much different place now than when you sent your first child here in 1964. Much has changed, but the values espoused by Mrs. Flippen and Mr. Pitt remained intact.

   They are. I certainly feel it. Everything I see is very, very positive.

   You’re a well-respected leader who has played an integral, if understated, role in the community. Yet everyone calls you “Wally.” There’s never been any pretense.

   Ego is one of man’s great sins. At a spiritual level, I’ve always felt that there’s no such thing as an ordinary person. Everyone’s special.

   The prayer of St. Francis of Assisi is my life philosophy. I read that regularly. It’s in understanding that you’re understood. It’s in giving that you receive. It’s in loving that you’re loved.

   When I went to Byrd in ‘67, we had 200 employees. Within 90 days, I was on a first name basis with every one of them. It made a difference.

   I really got that training in the Marine Corps. If you’re out in the field, the first guy to eat is the junior guy, then in order of rank. The senior person eats last. That, to me, is a pretty good metaphor for life. It’s how you treat people.