Special Board of Aldermen Page 2
September 14, 2016
Department of Education’s technical team culminating in Sunday night an agreement with ITT for us to take
over the teach out responsibilities. That does not include any deal on the property so the property remains part
of ITT for the moment, at least. We received the necessary regulatory permissions from NIASK, the crediting
agency on Monday from the New Hampshire Commission on Higher Education and completed the process.
We are keeping all of the employees on except the president, ITT terminated its president and it terminated all
of Daniel Webster employees today. That was not part of the plan, it wasn’t in the MOU; we were hoping for
more time. We got a call late yesterday afternoon asking if we could put all of their employees on their payroll
by tomorrow morning which is a big feat. We scrambled our HR team and the only way we could do it that
quickly is we are taking everybody on as a temporary full-time employee which means they will have no break
in salary, they become our employees tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. and we are also able to give them medical
benefits. That will carry us through a transition time when we can get our HR teams on campus and go
through the process of actually on-boarding people over the next three months. We expect to take most, if not
all of the employees on. Obviously there is no school for which they would recruit so there are six people in
admissions but we think they are really good people and we can use them in other capacities. We have made
an offer to ITT for the property and it is the only communication for which we have not received a response and
we don’t know what that means. Of course if they are heading towards bankruptcy, which everybody expects
as early as tomorrow that becomes complicated, although they only have one principle creditor who has
collateralized the whole of the campus. There is a path to procuring the property. We've been asked if we
would keep the campus there or move it. We just haven’t had time to think about that yet. There are some
facilities that are very attractive to us; we love the aviation programs that are there. Proximity to the airport is
important for that but there is a lot of overlap with programs at the Manchester campus. The way a teach out
works is that it’s a commitment from us to see all of their seniors through to graduation as Daniel Webster
College students so NIASK extends their accreditation only for that purpose until August and we get them
across the finish line. Anyone with 90 credits or more will get a Daniel Webster diploma. Anyone with 90
credits or less is automatically an SNHU student unless they elect to transfer and we will counsel them on that
and give them all of the support and guidance that they need. We guaranteed their actual tuition which is
lower than ours. ITT already collected hundreds of thousands of dollars of tuition payments which we will
never see so we have eaten that expense. Will Zemp, who is my Chief of Staff, has already moved down to
the campus with a team of people from financial aid services, etc. to system transition. Our goal right now is to
get students squared away and give them an experience that is as good as or better than what they would
have had with ITT and then move through the second and third phase questions. The second phase question
is what will happen with this property and it should come to us. One of the ways that we can think about that:
and we would welcome an on-going conversation with you about that...there are a lot possibilities there and
we understand the importance of the college and its presence in Nashua but there is no Daniel Webster
College any longer so what else could be there including an SNHU Nashua presence and that’s very much a
possibility.
Vice President Wilshire
Thank you for stepping forward so quickly to alleviate the concern of the staff and the students.
Alderman Dowd
Thank you for stepping in. You have a phenomenal campus in Manchester. Are the students that are going to
school here have access to your facilities in Manchester?
Mr. LeBlanc
Right now we are just trying to make sure they have access in Nashua and keep the lights on. We will start to
bring in services. We have buses that we run and we will bus them all up. We will hold a welcome bar-be-que.
We don’t want them to feel like second-class citizens.
