From Bottom to Top Tier in a Decade: The Wagner College Turnaround Years is a memoir recounting one of the most remarkable turnaround stories in American higher education, as recalled by the president whole a fourteen-year campaign bringing this financially troubled, under-enrolled, bottom-ranked college from disrepair and impending closure to wide regard as one of the top small, residential private colleges in the east. By the time Norman Smith departed in2002, the college was ranked top tier, was full to capacity, and was cited as one of America’s most beautiful college campuses. Located on a hilltop overlooking Manhattan that had once been Vanderbilt and Cunard estates, Wagner College should never have gotten into trouble. This recounting is not only an engaging human story of the many trustees, benefactors, faculty, and staff who were key to the turnaround, but also represents a case study template of what must happen for any college to survive and ultimately fly nourish in these competitive times for private higher education.
