Barton Resigns After Record Year

By Jeremy Duda
Editor in Chief

Vice President for University Relations Robert Barton ’65 announced Monday that he intends to resign at the end of December. The announcement comes after his alumni fundraising efforts produced a record year for the Wesleyan Annual Fund in 1998.

Barton oversaw major restructuring in the University Relations office since taking over the post in April 1996. At the outset of his tenure, Barton was faced with a struggling fundraising campaign, and took over a position which had been vacant for most of the ’95-’96 academic year.

Barton organized his department to focus on the class year and location of alumni rather than the size or type of their gifts.

"Bob has successfully changed University Relations into a relationship-based organization," President Doug Bennet said in a press release Monday.

Barton, who on many weekends travels from Middletown to northwest Massachusetts and back, decided to resign so he could spend more time at home.

"This is kind of a sixties thing, a kind of listen to your soul thing ...this has been a delightful and meaningful time, and I feel like I’ve made a good contribution here," Barton said.

"He’s going home to spend more time with my mom and my brother, who is in his last year of high school," said Barton’s daughter Molly, a junior at Wesleyan. "He pushed the alumni program really far in a short time and they were lucky to have him."

Since Barton will not leave for another four months, he said he will aim to act as more of a facilitator or coach in University Relations than a driver.

"There are only a few logical times to leave. I just can’t see myself making the kind of effort and doing the commuting over the next five or six years ...it’s tough if the campaign leader leaves in the middle of it," Barton said.

James Dresser ’63, a charter trustee and chair of the Board’s University Relations Committee, will assist Barton in the transition first as a consultant and later as Interim Vice President of University Relations.

"Jim Dresser’s leadership and a strong University Relations organization will ensure continuity and steady success," Bennet said.

Dresser will continue a long term fundraising campaign begun by Barton. Barton describes the first entrepreneurial phase of this campaign as nearly complete and foresees that the emphasis of the second phase will shift to management and organization. In approximately five years, University Relations aims to have accumulated two to three million dollars in gifts, according to Barton.

Even after Barton leaves his current position, he will remain on call as a consultant though he will reside on his farm in the Berkshires.

"We chose the Berkshires as a place we wanted to raise our family ...we’ve got crops and Christmas trees and animals and chores and all those rural pleasures," Barton said. "I’d like to get my family raised and I’d like to get in more robust shape."

"They’ll miss him at noon basketball," Molly said.

Additional Reporting by Andy McIntosh