Elon University President Connie Book sat down with Elon News Network to discuss the Elon-Queens merger, the Boldly Elon initiatives and campus expansions.
This interview was edited for clarity.
We’re just coming back from a summer of transition with the university. Tell me a little bit about all the things that happened this summer and how we’re going into the fall with those?
This summer was a historic summer, so I serve as a trustee for our accreditor. So the accreditation review that was required associated with our merger with Queens University. Because I’m a trustee, I was at the meeting to actually hear the decision. And so I had to recuse myself because it involved the university. But as I was standing in the back of the room watching the vote take place, it was really exciting for me. And just the unanimous support of everyone about the merger means a lot. So that happened on June 11. When the accreditor says you’re good to go, then that triggers a federal process. So once we got the nod from our accreditor, we had ten days to take it to the federal government to begin the federal process. We met that window. They required us to provide financial audited statements of our two institutions and what they look like together within 30 days. So we were very busy this summer getting that filing together. So we filed that on July 30th. Now for the federal merger to be finalized, it does have to be approved by the Department of Ed. This part of the process doesn’t have a timeline. We’re not able to say exactly when it will come in. But if you look at mergers where Northeastern has had a change of control and merged and taken over operations for Marymount and Villanova with Cabrini, they’re usually running about 18 to 24 months.
Tell me what success looks like in five years, if this merger goes through?
I think we’re already feeling some of the impact of success. We’ve announced that our law school will start a full-time program on the Queens campus beginning fall of '27. We also have been talking several years about our really exciting physician assistant program. We had a very good site-visit in May from the accreditor for physician assistant, and we’ll hear that decision in October. So we’re all anticipating a January start to that program.
We’re already seeing some of the opportunities we wanted to unfold for Elon. We have this beautiful 700 acres here in Alamance County, and now we have this wonderful 20 acres, this dynamic urban environment that our students can pursue graduate studies and some internship and semester Study USA programs like the one we run in sport. I imagine more of these coming. The business school has developed a co-op year, a three plus a co-op, and that co-op would be in Charlotte. So we’re imagining students would live at Queens and complete a co-op in their senior year.
To me, this gives Elon students the best of both options: a beautiful residential setting here in Alamance County, but they can also think about that semester in a dynamic city, one of the world’s fastest growing cities and a wonderful place to be. So many Elon alums in Charlotte and now Queens alumni joining us in a really exciting proposition.
The deadline for the Boldly Elon Strategic Plan is 2030. Tell me about what progress looks like today?
In 2030, we have a goal, a really important goal that our endowment is going to reach $625 million. And so we’re doing all the modeling and we are going to exceed that goal, so I’m really excited. Elon’s endowment should be about $640 million by 2030. And we just cleared $500 million. People can do a lot of things with their wealth, and I’m so grateful when they say, ‘Hey, we want to make a difference in someone else’s life by providing a scholarship.’
So we just crossed the $500 million. And with Queens, with the merger, we assume the assets of that endowment. Most of our endowment goes to scholarships and their endowment's roughly $185 million. So I’ve been saying by 2030 we’re going to have a $1 billion endowment. So I do think when you think about size and scale, we are stronger together.
We’ll be at 8,500 students together, and we will grow a few graduate students. But we actually think our undergraduate numbers are about right. We need to keep the size we are, but we’re trying to make sure our curriculum stays meaningful, not just grow. We’re thinking about graduate growth, the accelerated pathways where you come to Elon for three years, then you go to the law school or the PA or PT program, as well as these other graduate programs. I do think there’ll be more of those. So the faculty are working on some ideas. We don’t have anything necessarily queued up right now, but I do think there’ll be more of those.
Tell me about the progress on Roberts Academy?
We did open in the temporary facility with third and fourth grade. And we did hire two Elon grads. Why not go to the talent that you know?
One of the other elements of this gift is a Center for Engaged Learning and Experiential Education, to train teachers in using the Orton-Gillingham method. That will be open to all teachers, which I love this about the Roberts family, that if you can’t go to the school, then let’s also work to solve the other issue because it takes, it’s an intense certification and it can be expensive. So this way they can afford it. It’s within reach.
We did spend the summer plotting where should this school be? But we were able to secure some land between the Danieley Center and the Francis Center. So there’s houses on it now, but we are imagining that that’s where you’ll have spots for first through sixth grade students. We worked with the architect to turn the school sideways, so the pickup line will be in the interior and not on the road.
I do think what’s nice about it is Elon students who are studying special ed will be able to walk to the school. I didn’t want it so far away that it wasn’t accessible for student teaching and that kind of thing. I think we’ve landed on a good solution.
Do you have any updates on the progress of the Slattery Center?
We are hoping by mid-October that we are moving the equipment and things in and have at least a partial certificate of occupancy. The thing about that building is there’s a lot of equipment. You’ve got exercise science labs, you’ve got all the workout equipment, you’ve got a bouldering wall, a rock climbing, all that kind of stuff, so it requires training to use. So what we’re hoping is that we can get all the equipment moved in, and the people and the student workers trained in November and December, so that when we come back in January, it’s fully operational.
It’s exciting. It’s a big project. We’ve exceeded our fundraising goal. We’re very grateful to the Slattery family for saying that this is a building that represented their values and wanted to support our goals around well-being.
The university released its newest version of its artificial intelligence student guide. What do you hope an Elon grad could get out of knowing how to use AI?
It actually was a pretty big summer for AI and Elon. We renamed the business analytics degree analytics and AI. We teach AI across all disciplines. You know, I think the faculty’s position has been that you need to be teaching students, ‘This is how our discipline interacts with AI.’
I like the fact that we have a group who doesn’t embrace AI, intentionally saying, ‘No, I don’t want to use that.’ I actually think that’s good for our students to hear the continuum of thought about AI.
We also have an AI hub, and it’s got a toolbox with 100 tools in it for faculty, staff and students. And we set up an AI sandbox so people can go practice.
Over 3,000 universities and colleges have downloaded this, I think because it is talking about humanity and human intelligence in the middle of all this artificial intelligence that people are very interested in. And more in this considering these challenges of humanity and integrity and ethics and how do we know that we know something? And this is really the work of hard work of faculty is around assessment, because we used to just ask you to write a paper and or answer this multiple choice. Well, both of those can be delivered with AI. So it’s really more important what question you’re asking because the question will let us know if you know it. But the faculty are going to have to redesign how they assess learning. And that’s going to take work.
What are you most excited for about this new HealthEU center?
I’m super excited that it has an indoor track on the upper part, and I will be using that indoor track. I’m also excited that we have like a traditional swimming pool with viewing, you know? So we’ll see. Well, you know, it’s all set up, so we’ll definitely enhance our club. But locally we’re going to have a lot more community engagement with this Slattery Center. So in the same way community people can use our library, we are thinking that community people will be able to use the Slattery Center.
It was a summer of transition and now it seems like we are entering a fall of transition. As president, what are you most excited for?
It’s going to be a really good year. You know I’m excited about the Slattery Center. We’ve got very exciting Homecoming plans, which I want to talk about it, but I can’t. It will be fun and exciting.
As the president, my head space is always like five years ahead trying to think, where do we need to be in five years? If you notice across from the Inn at Elon, there was a house there, and students might have noticed when they came back there was no more house there.
So Elon was able to secure that property across from the Inn at Elon, just across the way, and that’s where we’re imagining our new Performing Arts Center is going to be. So as soon as the Slattery Center’s finished, I’ll start working on raising money for the new performing arts center. This will be transformative to our community. Of course, we have really talented performing arts students, and they’re going to be so excited about this new aspect.
So in short, there is so much to be excited about. I was excited about the Princeton Review rankings. We look at the 15 categories that we got named in, all good things and students did that. That’s a student survey. And I was like, look at our students, so happy and smart and doing great things. It made me really proud to read that list and to know that our students feel that way.